I decided to uninstall CCleaner since I don't use it. I went to Add/Remove programs (through Windows settings). Checked CCleaner. Chose "Uninstall".
While uninstalling I noticed alot of weird s**t in the information window. It started to remove things from folders that has nothing to do with CCleaner.
When at 100% uninstalled - I noticed it removed everything from my Dropbox-folder (which has important stuff in it but luckily it can be restored from their website).
Looking further, I now see it removed almost every program from my Programs-folder on two of my three hard drives. All my installed games on Steam, on the Battle.net-app. All my virtual instruments I use for making music etc.
Wtf is this? I don't have a recovery-file for Windows so I can't roll back to before I uninstalled CCleaner. Obviously I have to re-install EVERYTHING I lost.
Can someone answer me WHY this happens? Fix this f***ing bug immediately. I feel sorry for all the people with less experience using CCleaner. Seems to be more trouble than it actually helps.
I can confirm this extremely dangerous bug! And I honestly find it an impertinence from Piriform that this bug, which has already been reported several times, has not been investigated.
The problem already starts with the installer. If another installation folder is selected here, the installer does not automatically attach the "CCleaner" folder. This leads to the fact that CCleaner is installed unintentionally e.g. into the folder "D:\Program Files" and not into "D:\Program Files\CCleaner".
If the Unistaller is executed now, it deletes the complete content of the folder "D:\Program Files"!
How do you manage to code an uninstaller so badly?
By the way, reproducing the bug took me less than 5 minutes in a VM. Very sad that Piriform can't manage something like that itself... ?☹️
That CCleaner should be removing everything from its installation directory is, under normal circumstances, exactly what you would want CCleaner to be doing. Not just the files from its original installation manifest but any updates, log files, etc so that it does not leave any traces of itself behind.
Looking back through older forum posts I can find a couple of other cases over the past year where it looks like similar things may have happened. It seems as though a problem arises if an advanced user (after clicking through "Customize" and then "More" in their initial installation) has mistakenly configured their CCleaner installation directory to be {foldername}/ instead of {foldername}/CCleaner. So not a new issue if so, and a rare set of circumstances, but high-impact and one we'd want to shield our users from creating.
The devs are looking at alternatives at the moment. We don't want to have circumstances where CCleaner errs on the side of caution and leaves bits of itself behind, or to prevent advanced users from installing CCleaner where they wish. A likely safety measure would be to partially sanitise the installation location chosen to ensure that it is indeed going into its own directory and not a parent directory.
In my opinion, it is not very useful if an installer accepts "C:\", "C:\Program Files", "C:\Program Files (x86)", etc. as the installation folder without a subfolder for the application. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard for NSIS based installers, for whatever reason... However, the uninstaller of other applications (e.g. Firefox) at least deletes only its own files and subfolders.
You should actually know at Piriform which files and subfolders will be added after installation when CCleaner is used, so a list with the corresponding file and folder patterns should be easy to implement. Such a list should always be preferred over aggressive recursive deletion.
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Unfortunately, this seems to be standard for NSIS based installers
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Not the first time that our use of NSIS has created a rod for our own back.
1 hour ago, APMichael said:
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You should actually know at Piriform which files and subfolders will be added after installation when CCleaner is used
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In theory. In practice this can depend a bit on what version the user originally installed, what updates they have had, if any updates are still incomplete, if they had log files in there, etc what their initial manifest of files was and what would be there now. Ensuring that the installation directory chosen is its own folder is probably the tidiest way to go.
Faced same issue. CCleaner removed all contents of Folder D:/Applications on uninstalling from Windows control panel. Point to be noted is the CCleaner was installed under D:/Applications/CCleaner
App version was 5.91 and latest on website as of 04-04-2022 1:00 PM IST
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What was the cause of this, a year later?
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As Dave CCleaner stated above;
the cause was if an advanced user installed CCleaner into a non-standard location but didn't specify a seperate folder for CCleaner in that non-standard location.
If that had happened and CCleaner was then uninstalled, then everything in the folder where it had been installed would be deleted by the uninstall.
That's why CCleaner should have been installed in it's own seperate folder.
If CCleaner had been correctly installed into a folder of it's own (whether called 'CCleaner' or not) then only the CCleaner files would have been removed on an uninstall.
It would be pretty rare for that particular set of circumstances to happen, but it could happen (did happen) and so it was a bug.
Thanks. That's one more reason why I won't install a program application onto any other drive but C (System) drive. I've had bad experiences in the past ( going back to Windows 95 days) where If I do so, things can go array. But I can understand why some people would want to install onto a drive other than C.
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the cause was if an advanced user installed CCleaner into a non-standard location but didn't specify a seperate folder for CCleaner in that non-standard location.
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... and this was solved a year ago in CCleaner 6. From the release notes: "To avoid mishaps, CCleaner will always be installed to a /CCleaner/ folder" - to prevent users declaring root folders as the CCleaner installation folder.
It seems like the question has already been addressed and solved in CCleaner 6. According to the release notes, the solution implemented was to ensure that CCleaner will always be installed to a "/CCleaner/" folder. This measure was put in place to prevent users from mistakenly declaring root folders as the CCleaner installation directory, thus avoiding potential mishaps during installation. The decision to enforce installation to a specific folder enhances the overall stability and reliability of CCleaner, providing users with a smoother and error-free experience.