automatically selects Chinese (simplified)

[stanrames]

Fresh rebuild WIN7 Pro (going to a 92 year old who has a failing 7 box).

Loaded latest CCleaner today....four times, add/remove uninstall after each failure.

Loads fine (I think it's 5.88, don't remember). Went to options, language auto scrolled to bottom of list to Chinese (simplified) and no way to fix it I can find.

Resolution was to load 5.27 like on my XP machine, that works perfectly (and NO update nagware).

Any ideas what's going on? No warnings I saw about being not compatible with 7.

 

Thanks.

 

Stan

[nukecad]

It's not clear from that post if you want to set Simplified Chinese as the language, or if it's already set as Chinese and you want to change it?

(If it's automatically setting Chinese during the install you may want to investigate your Windows settings).

In Options>Language you should be able to just click on the language you want from the list and CCleaner will change it straightaway.

If for some reason you can't change it that way then you should be able to set the language CCleaner uses this way:
Do another install of CCleaner but this time use the 'Slim' installer, 3rd one down from here, and you can set the language during the install.
https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner/builds

 

PS. Whilst you are on the builds page you may want to download the 'Sunset' installer for your XP machine.
That gives you the last CCleaner version  that is compatible with Vista and XP (v5.64).
PPS. That's why you don't get update notifications on Vista or XP, you can't update CCleaner on them to above 5.64.

 

[stanrames]

Haven't got a clue how to read or speak Chinese, so, no, not a choice. I know how to select language.....all four install attempts, went to check and uncheck boxes, "Options", "Settings" and language auto launched, scrolled to absolute bottom of list, everything on every page now in Chinese, uninstalled it.

Four times.

Not sure I even want to try latest version again. 5.27 loads and works without auto-launching language.

[nukecad]

As I hinted above - where did you get the Windows 7 installer from?

You could have a bigger problem here than just with the CCleaner install.

Yes the very old 5.27 installer is not picking up the Chinese system install.

But if the latest CCleaner standard installer is seeing it as Chinese Win 7 then no doubt other apps will also see it as Chinese Win 7.

That is not going to make your 92 y/o happy if/when they try to install something else. (Or if you.have given him a system with a compromised/virused Win 7).

[stanrames]

9 hours ago, nukecad said:

PS. Whilst you are on the builds page you may want to download the 'Sunset' installer for your XP machine.
That gives you the last CCleaner version  that is compatible with Vista and XP (v5.64).
PPS. That's why you don't get update notifications on Vista or XP, you can't update CCleaner on them to above 5.64.

 

I've been using CCleaner for what, 15 years...since early days anyway.

Used to be, one uncheck to stop telling me about new versions, maybe another to stop updates, and never a popup.

Still that way it seems on 5.27. I do NOT need anybody trying to update my drivers. I learned with Windoze Updates back in WIN95 to never accept updates without finding out what they hurt.

Same with drivers. Don't need someone updating my drivers and borking my machine. I have functioned well for all these years....nowadays had to learn how to kill 10 updates and telemetry....

New CCleaner is way too "busy". I don't want a PC health check. Don't want to be unable to stop it or bypass it. Don't want driver or software updates. As bad as AVG used to be.

I think we'll just save out the older CCleaner files and do older program installs when we have to rebuild a machine. Easier than this episode has been!

[stanrames]

3 minutes ago, nukecad said:

As I hinted above - where did you get the Windows 7 installer from?

You could have a bigger problem here than just with the CCleaner install.

Yes the very old 5.27 installer is not picking up the Chinese system install.

But if the latest CCleaner standard installer is seeing it as Chinese Win 7 then no doubt other apps will also see it as Chinese Win 7.

That is not going to make your 92 y/o happy if/when they try to install something else. (Or if you.have given him a system with a compromised/virused Win 7).

We czeched that first. And no, English (actually EN-US) is selected. All other programs, Office, Chrome, IE, and FF work fine and in english. Even Malwarebytes (paid).

 

It does not INSTALL as Chinese.....it fully installs in English.....until you go Options, Settings, and it auto launches to the bottom of the list. If Cyrillic happened to be at the bottom, that's what it would do, methinks.

 

You try to scroll up from there, as soon as you let go the Left Click it's off to the races running back to the bottom.

It's the bottom of the page that's the problem, and the inability to overrride it, even when loaded and opens initially in English. In fact, if I did NOT do Options/Settings, I believe it would work fine.

[nukecad]

You still haven't answered the question of just where you got that Win 7 installer from?

Would you like to give us the URL?

[Dave CCleaner]

Potentially worrying provenance of your installer aside, CCleaner 5.27 is almost 5 years old.  It will probably still run on Windows 7 (if fully service-packed), but might not do much if any of the software on it has been updated in the past few years - most of the 65+ CCleaner version updates since then have been to add compatibility for the newer versions of the software that it cleans.  If you're still using Chrome 58 or earlier, for example, then you might be okay.  Otherwise probably not.

1 hour ago, stanrames said:

Used to be, one uncheck to stop telling me about new versions, maybe another to stop updates, and never a popup.

None of those alerts appear on the latest versions either if you switch them off (Options > Updates to control automatic updates and notifications; Options > Privacy > Offers to control notifications about discount sales).

1 hour ago, stanrames said:

New CCleaner is way too "busy". I don't want a PC health check. Don't want to be unable to stop it or bypass it. Don't want driver or software updates.

None of those features are mandatory to use.  No drivers get updated unless you actually go into that menu option and explicitly run it, for example.  Don't like the one-click cleaning in Health Check? Options > Settings > CCleaner Home Screen, select "Custom Clean" and you're back to using the classic CCleaner interface. 

Oh and you can also change your language from the Options > Settings screen as well.

 

TL;DR: You need to keep CCleaner up to date if you want it to keep cleaning things.  But we have quite deliberately made it so that people who want to use CCleaner the way they always did can continue to do so.

[stanrames]

I'll have to look into where the 7 installer came from. It was a disc, is all I can tell you. EN-US.

Gonna take until after holidays to find out.

5-27 does work. Works with XP and 7. You folks think this 5.88 is great. Okay, it's great.

Launch the program, wants you to do setup (and I am NOT going to do that again just so I get all the words right), but then it wants to do PC and/or health check.

NO option I found to by pass that. Have to go through it enough to cancel.

I am surprised it didn't demand I have a Microsoft Account before proceeding.

In all these years of using CCleaner, never had a popup asking me to go pro, advertising for Black Friday, whatever. I have read this forum, and am appalled at come of the things I see.

There is no way I'm loading latest and greatest any more.

I am happy that my experience, which I tried to report here, has never been experienced by anybody else.

 

 

[stanrames]

Lit the machine off, searched, ONLY English (United States) is entered everywhere. Not sure what that means, but that's what I find.

[nukecad]

9 hours ago, stanrames said:

I but then it wants to do PC and/or health check.

NO option I found to by pass that. Have to go through it enough to cancel.

That only happens the first time after you install, and you can simply ignore it and instead go to Options>About and ste the CCleaner Home Screen to Custom Clean.
You need never use Health Check unless you click on it. (Although it may be better, simpler, to use for a 92 yo who is not tech savy).

OK enough of that.
We can warn you until we are blue in the face that CCleaner 5.27 is way too old to be cleaning your machines properly. (Even the old XP machine should be using CCleaner 5.64).
But we can't force you, if you want to be stubborn about it even despite knowing that 5.27 will not be cleaning your machines properly then that's your personal choice.
(Although TBH I don't see that you should force that choice on another person, your 92 yo).

The Chinese thing is something else, nobody else is reporting anything like that so it  seems to be just that machine.
There is just a slight worry that you may have got a modified/infected version of Windows 7 from somewhere.
Back-doored  Win 7 installers do exist out there. See this thread at Bleepingcomputer which also gives a link to a trusted download site for Win 7 ISOs (Digital River):
https://www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325/page-2#post-124821
Do you realy want to be reponsible for giving a 92 yo a machine that may be infected with Chinese spyware or worse?
(And if it's hidden in a modified Windows System installer itself then an Antivirus?Antimalware may not see it even after the install).

[stanrames]

Gave us some ideas to look into. AFAIK this was MS disc, with license key....I always thought those had their own installer (as in, my XP discs, when loaded, load an installer first, even on the bench with no ethernet) but at my age memory could be failing on that.

Your warning about other programs loaded later...figured we were covered with Chrome, MSN, FireFox, Office, MalwareBytes and whatever else, and never a question of wrong language or failure of components to load as that BC thread indicated.

All auto-loaded, no question of language ever as far as I remember.

[stanrames]

snicker. Just opened my old laptop and checked CCleaner.3.27.1900.

[stanrames]

so.....just so I understand. The question was what installer did we use...and we thought you were asking about WIN7. Now research has shown maybe not. As in PRC hackers with first Piriform and now AVAST.

Are you saying the possibility of a PRC hack into the CCleaner installer may be an issue with this?
Maybe me finding 5.27 on a non-Piriform/Avast website eliminated the PRC component?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/avast-no-plans-to-discontinue-ccleaner-following-second-hack-in-two-years/

 

[hazelnut]

3 hours ago, stanrames said:

snicker. Just opened my old laptop and checked CCleaner.3.27.1900.

That version was released in January 2013

Nothing whatsoever to do with the hack (which was years later)

[nukecad]

5 hours ago, stanrames said:

The question was what installer did we use...and we thought you were asking about WIN7.

Yes the Win 7 installer. There are known compromised ones out there to catch the unwary.

The fact that you are seeing this strange language issue when nobody else is, and only seeing it on one machine, points to something being odd on that particular machine.

if more CCleaner users were seeing it then that would be different, but nobody except yourself is reporting it.
It's certainly not happening on my machines.

As Hazelnut says the CCleaner backdooring in 2017 was a different thing.
Yes it did oringinate in China, but they were not interested in home users, as the zdnet article that you linked tells you they were after the big tech companies. To try and steal their development secrets,

Quote

Hackers were looking for computers installed on the networks of several major tech companies, such as Cisco, Microsoft, Google, NEC, and others.

Which also tells you that those big tech companies were all using CCleaner, and they still do.

If CCleaner wasn't so widely used then the Chinese hackers wouldn't have bothered attacking it.
They also attacked and compromised Teamviewer, another very widely used app, in a similar way in 2016.

If you did happen to get the tainted CCleaner installer (and it's freely admitted that most users did get it, I've still got a copy of it) then all it did was check if the computer was at one of the targeted companies and was it connected to their internal network, if so it reported back to the hackers that they had found a target,
If you weren't at one of those companies then it did nothing.
Only about 40 machines at those big companies actually got a second stage hack, but nothing got stolen. (As far as anyone knows).

The point is that as it is known that Chinese state sponsored hackers are widely active then anything unusual 'chinese' that shows up on a machine has to be regarded as possibly suspicious.
Especially if it turns up on a Windows OS that is end-of-life and so no longer getting security updates, both XP and 7 are EOL.
https://www.techadvisor.com/news/windows/windows-7-2021-dangerous-3807335/

[stanrames]

14 hours ago, hazelnut said:

That version was released in January 2013

Nothing whatsoever to do with the hack (which was years later)

Oh,I know...fully.  Just that it's there and still trucking along.

[stanrames]

I'm about done with this. I am happy with the version I loaded.

I did discover, while researching timelines, that 5.27 was FEB17, about the time Piriform handed the company off to Avast.

I also knew Avast folded AVG into their fold six months prior. I have my own opinions of AVG, being one of hundreds whose computers had entire files deleted, then enough of the OS to shut down. Experts thought that update for an Intel processor not an AMD like it seems everybody who crashed had.

I did not know a week ago that Avast owned CCleaner. I looked at a new install of CCleaner with all the icons to click...including the monetezation "UPGRADE" icon, and driver updates I don't see on pre-Avast ownership.

I don't need that. I don't need "just click the x and it goes away" until cookies get reset.

I am looking into options,but never again will I use newer versions of CCleaner.

I'll sign out now.

[nukecad]

Actually Norton now ultimately own CCleaner, they bought out Avast.
(Well the press says they merged, but Norton paid money for all of Avast's shares which looks like a buyout to most people).
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/11/22619667/nortonlifelock-avast-merger-deal-anti-virus-cyber-security-software

As long as you are personally happy with your installs then that's your choice.

The advice above still stands though;
as long as you continue to use end-of-life Windows versions, and out-of-date software. your system will not be as safe/secure/clean as it should be.

We can't force anybody to change their ways.
But you should look carefully at what you are doing, both for yourself and particularly with what you are going to be giving an old person to use.

[Dave CCleaner]

15 hours ago, stanrames said:

I did not know a week ago that Avast owned CCleaner

Well indirectly, yes.  Avast bought Piriform back in 2017, and Piriform still owns CCleaner (and various other products).  Companies buy and sell other companies all the time.  Back in the 1990s, the mining giant BHP owned the beer company Fosters.  (I do not recall any coal being added to the beer as a result.)

1 hour ago, nukecad said:

Actually Norton now ultimately own CCleaner, they bought out Avast.

Technically, they haven't quite yet.  Both companies have agreed to merge, the shareholders of each company have voted overwhelmingly in favour, and the merger is expected to be completed in "mid-2022" https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nortonlifelocks-recommended-merger-with-avast-cleared-by-us-department-of-justice-301423724.html

The name of the proposed new combined entity has yet to be determined - presumably NortonLifeLockAviraBullguardAvastAVGPrivaxPiriform will not abbreviate well to a stock ticker and they'll be coming up with something new.

[Nergal]

2 hours ago, Dave CCleaner said:

The name of the proposed new combined entity has yet to be determined - presumably NortonLifeLockAviraBullguardAvastAVGPrivaxPiriform will not abbreviate well to a stock ticker and they'll be coming up with something new

Lol