Welcome back to CCleaner Professional ???

On 21/07/2023 at 15:03, lmacri said:
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		Hi Wisewiz:
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		What really concerns me is that a <strong>Portable</strong> build of CCleaner <strong>should not need to create all these registry entries in the first place</strong>.
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I echo your concern as true portable app should NOT be creating anything inside registry or any files outside its portable folder.

Just because something doesn't mandate use of an installer doesn't automatically make it portable.

As I posted earlier, using CCleaner Portable for the first time on a new device will by default setup 50+ registry entries and will setup default configuration ignoring whatever is inside CCleaner.ini file that goes with portable instance.

However, simply deleting everything from the registry and blocking access to "shepherd.ff.avast.com" is sufficient to prevent CCleaner Free Portable to add any of the problematic entries back into registry. If you have an advanced router you can do it there, or can add an entry to the firewall, or simply add this to your hosts file:

0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com

0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com

Note: I have no CCleaner entries in Task Scheduler, and have nothing enabled under Privacy. It even works with enabled checks for new version, but keep in mind that if you enable automatic updates once updated it will replace Portable version with the Full version. I gave up on full or paid versions long time ago, so I'm not sure if above is also sufficient for those versions or if you have some Scheduled jobs enabled. I only tested it with the one for skipping UAC and it still works like a charm.

Also, in my case even with portable version it will create DATA (with 6 more subfolders) and LOG subfolders which are empty, so it requires write permission in its folder which is another contradiction with what I consider true portable app that one can place on their thumb drive.

I hope this will help some of you ?

23 hours ago, lmacri said:
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		The last thing I want to do is plug my removable USB stick into someone else's computer, run CCleaner Portable, and leave behind dozens of orphaned CCleaner registry entries on their system.
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Late last night I completely cleaned all CCleaner/Piriform registry entries from my computer. I inserted my CCleaner thumb drive into the computer and ran CCleaner. I then searched RegEdit and there were many new entries pertaining to CCleaner so yes you will leave orphaned registry entries on any computer you us the CCleaner thumb drive on.

38 minutes ago, Crni said:
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		I echo your concern as true portable app should NOT be creating anything inside registry or any files outside its portable folder.


		Just because something doesn't mandate use of an installer doesn't automatically make it portable.
	</p>
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That's just one of the reasons why homemade (user-made) portables don't come close to the quality of properly made portables. You can find a whole bunch of sets of instructions for creating your own "portable" versions from Installer versions on the Web, but it ain't the same thing at all. The homemade ones behave exactly like the installed ones. (If they work at all, that is.)

30 minutes ago, AnaRon said:
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		Late last night I completely cleaned all CCleaner/Piriform registry entries from my computer. I inserted my CCleaner thumb drive into the computer and ran CCleaner. I then searched RegEdit and there were many new entries pertaining to CCleaner so yes you will leave orphaned registry entries on any computer you us the CCleaner thumb drive on.
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I certainly hope the developers are paying attention to this discussion, or, at least, that the support people in the Philippines are listening to the complaints they are surely getting about this unacceptable behavior of the registry-fouling not-really-portable "portable" version.

The unwelcome Welcome screen is apparently gone. Let's hope they turn their attention now to making the portable truly portable.

On 20/07/2023 at 16:43, lmacri said:
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	<p>
		Hi Wisewiz:
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	<p>
		... I'm not sure if I missed a step in your instructions, but <strong>I don't know why you only have the four registry values </strong>in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform\CCleaner that are shown in your 13-Jul-2023 post &lt;<a href="<___base_url___>/topic/64278-welcome-back-to-ccleaner-professional/?do=findComment&amp;comment=343242" rel="">here</a>&gt; when I still have ~ 50 ...
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On 20/07/2023 at 17:02, Wisewiz said:
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		Me, neither! I tried to be precise in my description of what I did, but it's possible that either you or I missed a step ....
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On 23/07/2023 at 08:13, Crni said:
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		...  simply deleting everything from the registry and blocking access to "shepherd.ff.avast.com" is sufficient to prevent CCleaner Free Portable to add any of the problematic entries back into registry. If you have an advanced router you can do it there, or can add an entry to the firewall, or simply add this to your hosts file:
	</p>

	<p>
		0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com ...
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Hi Wisewiz:

According to your 14-Jul-2023 post <here> on page 3 of this thread you added 0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com to your hosts file. Could that be the missing step in your 19-Jul-2023 instructions <here> that will prevent the registry entries from being re-created?

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Could someone provide instructions for blocking shepherd.ff.avast.com in my Windows Firewall? For example, do I need to block both incoming and outgoing connections?

I created a custom rule in my Windows Firewall a few years ago to block all outbound traffic from CCleaner64.exe executable of my CCleaner Portable [Control Panel | System and Security | Windows Defender Firewall | Advanced Settings | Outbound Rules | New Rule | Rule Type = Program; This Program Path: E:\Portable\CCleaner\CCleaner64.exe; Action: Block the Connection; Profile: All (Domain/Private/Public)] as instructed in the How-To Geek article How to Block An Application from Accessing the Internet with Windows Firewall to try and prevent CCleaner Portable from sending telemetry back to Avast / Piriform. However, it sounds like I need to plug yet another backdoor that allows Avast to create an inbound connection from shepherd.ff.avast.com and make unwanted changes to my registry. It's like playing whack-a-mole - you make one change to make CCleaner Portable more secure and behave more like a "true" portable app and Avast finds another way to circumvent it.

I ditched Norton Security as my antivirus after their parent company Gen Digital began adding all sorts of unnecessary bloat (e.g., Software Updater, Driver Updater, Norton Crypto, etc.) that they ported over from Avast Antivirus Free and other software programs that Gen Digital has acquired in recent years. Perhaps the time has finally come for me to ditch CCleaner Portable as well and move on to BleachBit Portable.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3208 * Firefox v115.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23050.5-1.1.23060.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.33.272-1.0.2069 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

1 hour ago, lmacri said:
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	<p>
		Hi Wisewiz:
	</p>

	<p>
		According to your 14-Jul-2023 post &lt;<a href="<___base_url___>/topic/64278-welcome-back-to-ccleaner-professional/?do=findComment&amp;comment=343276" rel="">here</a>&gt; on page 3 of this thread you added 0.0.0.0 shepherd.ff.avast.com to your hosts file.  Could that be the missing step in your 19-Jul-2023 instructions &lt;<a href="<___base_url___>/topic/64278-welcome-back-to-ccleaner-professional/?do=findComment&amp;comment=343370" rel="">here</a>&gt; that will prevent the registry entries from being re-created?
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Might be. I added that line to my hosts file (in Win\Sys32\drivers\etc).

P.S.: I still have only the four and two I showed above (waaay above. Can you believe we're on page 6 now? I hope Piriform knows this is a serious issue.)

On 22/07/2023 at 08:54, lmacri said:
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		...I sent a support request to support@ccleaner.com and asked if creation of all these registry entries at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform\CCleaner is now the expected behaviour for CCleaner Portable v6.x or a bug,. I'll post back once I have an answer from customer support.
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On 24/07/2023 at 15:01, Wisewiz said:
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		... I hope Piriform knows this is a <strong>serious</strong> issue.
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Hi Wisewiz:

It's been over a week since I emailed support@ccleaner.com about the portable build creating dozens of unnecessary registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform\CCleaner and haven't had a response, and I didn't even get an auto-reply with a ticket number that I can reference. Perhaps someone with a Professional license will have better luck getting customer support to respond to a request for support.

I don't recall seeing a post in this forum by an Avast / Piriform employee in over two months (see nukecad's 05-Jul-2023 post in mogli's "Windows Defender Backup" Rule Not Working about recent staff layoffs) so I have no way of knowing if an employee is even monitoring this thread, but it doesn't look like customer engagement is a priority at the moment.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3208 * Firefox v115.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23050.9-1.1.23060.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.33.272-1.0.2069 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

24 minutes ago, lmacri said:
<div class="ipsQuote_contents">
	<p>
		Hi Wisewiz:
	</p>

	<p>
		It's been over a week since I emailed support@ccleaner.com about the portable build creating dozens of unnecessary registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform\CCleaner and haven't had a response, and I didn't even get an auto-reply with a ticket number that I can reference.  Perhaps someone with a Professional license will have better luck getting customer support to respond to a request for support.
	</p>
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Would you be willing to post a copy of your note to them for me to copy? Or, maybe note your main points for me? I have three Professional licenses, and I usually get very quick replies from them, even though I'm clearly blacklisted in their community. I call 'em as I see 'em.

1 hour ago, Wisewiz said:
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		Would you be willing to post a copy of your note to them for me to copy?...
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Hi Wisewiz:

It's a fairly long email (I included the steps I used to perform a clean reinstall of CCleaner Free Portable as well as a few images I've already posted in this thread) so I sent it to you via a private message.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3208 * Firefox v115.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23050.9-1.1.23060.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.33.272-1.0.2069 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

1 hour ago, lmacri said:
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		I have no way of knowing if an employee is even monitoring this thread,
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I spotted that there was one of the developers logged on and reading this thread about 2 days before v6.14 came out.

He didn't post anything, but is it a coincidence that a few days after that the welcome screen dissappeared again?

On 30/07/2023 at 07:53, lmacri said:
<div class="ipsQuote_contents">
	<p>
		It's been over a week since I emailed support@ccleaner.com about the portable build creating dozens of unnecessary registry entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Piriform\CCleaner and haven't had a response, and I didn't even get an auto-reply with a ticket number that I can reference.  Perhaps someone with a Professional license will have better luck getting customer support to respond to a request for support....
	</p>
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Hi Wisewiz:

I don't know if you ever got a response from Customer Support, but for future reference the link at https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general is correctly displaying an online support request form for me today. That link was posted in nukecad's 21-Aug-2023 reply in TonyN's Can't turn off auto extension!, so I assume it replaces the old URL at https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/requests/new that now throws a "secure connection failed" error in all my browsers.

I'm not entirely clear if both Pro and Free users can use this "general" form (it doesn't require users to enter a product key), but Avast / Piriform have completely ignored the last two emails I've sent to support@ccleaner.com so I might try that online form the next time I need to contact support and see what happens. I have no idea why Avast / Piriform can't just include a link at https://www.ccleaner.com/contact to their online support request form and stop making it so difficult for users to contact them.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3324 * Firefox v116.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23070.1004-1.1.23070.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.0.277-1.0.2114 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

Not sure what is happening that support are apparently not replying to emails at the moment?

The support form doesn't ask for a key because they can find it from your email. (That's why it asks to use the email you used when purchasing if you can).

As far the support.piriform.com documentation is concerned -:

They have been moving the documentation over to support.ccleaner.com for a while, and one of the few things that we have been told recently is that is 'completed' and support.piriform.com has now been closed/removed, which is why it's giving that connection error.

So old links on the forum to support.pirifilorm.com will no longer work. (And it's not always possible to give a direct equivalent/redirect - who'd want the job of editing all the old links anyway?)

@lmacri and @nukecad

Hi, both! I still haven't received a peep of any kind from them. And when I try the support page at support.ccleaner.com, I get this over and over again on successive attempts on successive days:

Clipboard01.jpg.a00ca0cafe828215159869641bfd0634.jpg

I feel "a little bit funny" (Elton) about pursuing this [Portable puts entries in the registry] issue, since my CC Portables on both my office machines still have only 4 original lines in HKLM and 2 lines (now just one) in HKCU. I've done a couple of things to those entries, with no visible effects on CC's behaviour. In LM, under the CCleaner key is a properties subkey with a DWord "UseRegistry" which had a value of 1 originally, and I've changed that to 0. In CU, in CCleaner, there were two DWord lines, an AP line (? no idea) and a DU line that was (I guess) recording old DU use from when I registered my key briefly and used the DU function to check what it would find (but I never use the update function; I get my driver updates when needed from the issuers). I've left the AP line and I deleted the DUxxxx line some time ago, and it hasn't been replaced.

I've tried here to describe what I might have done to achieve this minimal registry invasion, but I'm still mystified, and I see no evidence online (other than on this site) that anyone else is having a problem with the registry pollution. Maybe that's because your average user doesn't have any idea what the registry is.

34 minutes ago, Wisewiz said:
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		... I still haven't received a peep of any kind from them. And when I try the support page at support.ccleaner.com, I get this over and over again on successive attempts on successive days ...
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Hi Wizewiz:

Do you mean that's what's you see after you click the "Send Me My License Details" button at https://support.ccleaner.com/ and enter your email address?

CCleanerCustomerSupportRetrieveLicenseDetails21Aug2023.png.625415ea27d390b973483a7b39904d49.png

I don't have a Pro license but the reCAPTCHA challenge worked and when I clicked "Submit" the lookup correctly reported that Avast / Piriform can't find my license.  Perhaps <strong><a href="https://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache" rel="external nofollow">clearing your browsing history</a> </strong>(including your cookies) might get this working again.  If that doesn't help try temporarily disabling your <strong>browser extensions</strong>.

CCleanerCustomerSupportRetrieveLicensereCAPCHA21Aug2023.png.d23285565ce60d38b780cab7b616a356.png

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3324 * Firefox v116.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23070.1004-1.1.23070.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.0.277-1.0.2114 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

@lmacriI wipe my cookies, except for the ones I have CCleaner set to keep for me, every night before shutdown. Part of my nightly ritual.

The reCaptcha worked for me, too, but the Submit button just brings me the message I posted above. So yes, that's precisely what I mean.

("Do you mean that's what's you see after you click the "Send Me My License Details" button at https://support.ccleaner.com/ and enter your email address?")

The whole organization seems to be on holidays lately. The CC builds page, which always has the very latest versions the same day they're released, doesn't any more. 10584 is still there after at least a week.

2 hours ago, Wisewiz said:
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		The whole organization seems to be on holidays lately. The CC builds page, which always has the very latest versions the same day they're released, <em>doesn't</em> any more. 10584 is still there after at least a week.
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HI Wiisewiz:

See my 17-Aug-2023 thread Version Confusion - 6.14.10584 vs 6.15.10623. The Download buttons for the Free and Slim installers on https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds will actually offer an installer for CCleaner v6.15 (i.e., ccsetup615.exe; ccsetup615_slim.exe) but that download page is still offering the old ccsetup614.zip file CCleaner Portable v6.14.

I sent an email to support@ccleaner.com last week about discrepancies between their documentation and what software versions are actually be offered at https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds (and several other pages on their website) but haven't heard back from them.

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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.3324 * Firefox v116.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.23070.1004-1.1.23070.1005 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.6.0.277-1.0.2114 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7279 * CCleaner Free Portable v6.14.10584

@lmacri "but haven't heard back from them." Same song; second verse .... could be better, but it's getting worse. Where the h**l are these people, anyway?

50 minutes ago, Wisewiz said:
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		<a contenteditable="false" data-ipshover="" data-ipshover-target="<___base_url___>/profile/28709-lmacri/?do=hovercard" data-mentionid="28709" href="<___base_url___>/profile/28709-lmacri/" rel="">@lmacri</a>  "<span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#382e23;font-size:14px;">but haven't heard back from them." Same song; second verse .... could be better, but it's getting worse. Where the h**l are these people, anyway?</span>
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Manila, Philippines

Well, yeah, I knew that, but how can they all be taking a siesta for weeks on end? (Seriously, I hope nothing bad has happened to the support people.)