Software updater no longer works

CCleaner for Windows
1

As most of you in this community know, CCleaner is likely attempting the 3-step method for wiping out a feature that was previously provided as part of CCleaner Pro and re-introducing it as a ‘premium’ feature that will likely cost more. This was the Tools/Users feature in v6.39 that allowed custom clean on multiple user profiles, then quietly but deliberately removed in v7. Typical steps utilized by companies to remove, then ‘reintroduce’ a feature (usually at higher cost): 1) Remove feature with no warning, no ‘readme’ or other reason and instruct support personnel to essentially ignore/deflect complaints, 2) Wait for several updates, 3) Suddenly introduce in next major release (for CCleaner, likely v8), the ‘new’ feature, but no longer available in the same ‘edition’ (Pro/Premium, etc.), must pay extra… This is just my guess on how CCleaner execs will proceed.

In the meantime, while trying to revert back to 6.39 (I followed all the guides), it wiped out all my settings, but was able to manually restore ‘custom clean’ settings, etc. Software Updater no longer works**.** I simply get a generic error ‘there was a problem - try again later’. This ‘try again later’ implies that the Software Updater is an online service and CCleaner utilizes a server that has a database of latest versions of software. This has been going for over a week, so this message is bogus. Can’t follow prior advice from support since that will install v7 and v6.39 is difficult to keep (have to rename update .exe files to prevent it from updating to v7 - setting program option to NOT check for updates is deliberately ignored). Can’t find any %appdata%, Program Files or registry references to fix.

2

There are a lot of things not to like about CCleaner 7.

But we should at least be accurate/fair when criticising what has changed.

Cleaning multiple user profiles, ie. more than just the current user profile has ALWAYS been a Pro only feature.

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Next:

Software Updater is still working in v6.39
At least it still is here in the UK (I can’t speak for the rest of the world) - I just ran it now and it picked up the latest VLC released 3-days ago on the 8th Jan:

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It then updated VLC with no problem.

However it will at sometime stop working in v6.39.

Rolling back to v6.39 is only a stop-gap measure. v6.39 will NEVER get another update.
That is clearly stated on the “How to roll back…” post.
By the way that rollback post aslo tells you that you will lose your settings when rolling back, unless you have a saved backup of them from before it updated to 7.

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(Did you actually read the rollback post fully?)

The services that provide software and driver updates for CCleaner are out-sourced to specialist providers and which provider that is has been changed more than once in the past few years.

Which means that when one of the updater providers is changed then v6.39 won’t know about that change.

The same kind of thing will also happen when any of the browsers changes where it stores it files, and they do change that.
CCleaner 6.39 will never be updated to reflect that browser change, and so will no longer clear that browser fully (or at all).

No software company provides such changes for outdated versions, they change them in their lates version only.

EDIT- Despite what I said above, and what Piriform had told us, they did in fact release a v6.40.
The changes in it were only to fix a web connection issue (I think it was a licencing issue?) for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, no cleaning functions were changed or updated.

3

Please reread my OP - I stated that multiple user profiles was a Pro feature - what I’m fearing is the deliberate removal of a feature in v7 Pro, with the intent of later re-introducing as feature that will cost extra - following the model of the 800lb gorillas in the software industry (Microsoft, Apple, Intuit, Adobe, etc).

If they would simply restore the feature they took away in v7 Pro, then this posting would be unnecessary. I guess I could try to install v7 Pro along with v6.39 (uninstall v6.39, reinstall v7, then reinstall v6.39 without uninstalling v7) to restore the ‘software updater’ feature. This feature has often failed, even before the v7 upgrade was released.

4

I wouldn’t reccommend having both installed unless it’s for specific testing.

Whilst you can have both v6.39 and v7 installed (I have both on one of my laptops) you then have to take extra steps to manage them so that they don’t interfere with each other.
For just one example: each time that the v7 updates it will remove the v6.39 - meaning that you will then have to install the 6.39 and it’s settings from scratch again.

5

It appears that this is a regular cycle, v6.39 ‘software updater’ works for awhile, then fails. Since uninstalling/reinstalling v6.39 seems to temporarily fix the problem, I can only assume that there’s a config file somewhere that needs to be reset/deleted to allow it to work again, rather then uninstalling/reinstalling.