CCleaner v6.09 wipes out Office executables!

[fishpoem]

2/14/2023: The latest version of CCleaner deletes ALL Microsoft Office executables - Access, Word, etc. - GONE! 

v6.09 installed automatically either before or after an overnight shutdown. Now all the Office .exe files have disappeared. No other products were installed or uninstalled at this time - only CCleaner. I re-installed MS Office and everything works again. Nonetheless, pretty big screw-up, don't you agree?

[nukecad]

Had you actually run CCleaner v6.09? You don't say there whether you did or not.

In particular did you run the Registry Cleaner?
If you did run the Reg Cleaner then what version was/is your Office?

TBH as yesterday was the Microsoft Patch Tuesday updates then I'd be more inclined to suspect that it's something the Microsoft Update has done.
The Microsoft Updates will have installed when you rebooted after your shutdown.

On a longer shot - What Antivirus are you using?
There was a known issue with Avira and Bullguard AV's moving executables into a Windows temporary folder.
If you then ran any cleaner it would clear that temporary folder and the executables would stop working and have to be reinstalled.
None of the cleaning apps could fix that, only Avira/Bullguard could have fixed it.Aalthough we did find a way to stop it happening with CCleaner by 'excluding' that particular temporary folder.
It affected more than just Office though, and I haven't seen any reports of it happening for a while, but you never know.

If you could give us a few more details then things might become clearer as to what may have happened.
eg. what Windows version, what Office version, what AV if you have one installed, did you run the Registry Cleaner?

[Guest Andrei CCleaner]

@fishpoem Please send an email at support@ccleaner.com so they could investigate this issue further. 

[fishpoem]

On 15/02/2023 at 00:15, nukecad said:

Had you actually run CCleaner v6.09? You don't say there whether you did or not.

In particular did you run the Registry Cleaner?
If you did run the Reg Cleaner then what version was/is your Office?

TBH as yesterday was the Microsoft Patch Tuesday updates then I'd be more inclined to suspect that it's something the Microsoft Update has done.
The Microsoft Updates will have installed when you rebooted after your shutdown.

On a longer shot - What Antivirus are you using?
There was a known issue with Avira and Bullguard AV's moving executables into a Windows temporary folder.
If you then ran any cleaner it would clear that temporary folder and the executables would stop working and have to be reinstalled.
None of the cleaning apps could fix that, only Avira/Bullguard could have fixed it.Aalthough we did find a way to stop it happening with CCleaner by 'excluding' that particular temporary folder.
It affected more than just Office though, and I haven't seen any reports of it happening for a while, but you never know.

If you could give us a few more details then things might become clearer as to what may have happened.
eg. what Windows version, what Office version, what AV if you have one installed, did you run the Registry Cleaner?

I answered all your questions on an email I sent to support. Are you in that loop? I assumed you were, you didn't answer. btw, the problem just happened again after auto-install of the latest version of CCleaner. In fact, it had happened multiple times previously. I didn't see the connection with CCleaner installation until lately.

[nukecad]

No, I am not an employee. (Just an experienced and trusted user),
Employees have the word 'CCleaner' after their name and use the CCleaner logo to show that they are staff - like Andrei above.

I have no way of knowing what you said to support or what their reply was.

[Dave CCleaner]

On 14/02/2023 at 20:56, fishpoem said:

The latest version of CCleaner deletes ALL Microsoft Office executables

We see this sort of thing reported from time to time over the past couple of years - and it always strikes us as odd since, while CCleaner will clean Microsoft Office temporary files (under /AppData):

a) CCleaner doesn't remove executables (unless you have them stored somewhere particularly unusual, like your recycle bin - or as per @nukecad's note above, some misbehaving third party AV had moved them into a temp folder)

b) CCleaner staff all use Microsoft Office (as do quite a lot of other people, I gather - I hear that it is quite popular software) and it seems like something we would have noticed if it was happening to us in the course of normal operation.

I do recall several cases where upon further investigation, the users had checked the option to remove desktop shortcuts, seen that their Office shortcuts were missing from their desktop and concluded that Office was gone.

Other cases of "Microsoft Office isn't doing [expected thing]" tended to relate either to another productivity application taking over the file associations, or from putting Microsoft Office to sleep with Performance Optimizer.

@fishpoem: It seems that 2 weeks ago, customer support advised you that CCleaner will remove Microsoft Office temp files but will not remove Microsoft office itself.  Although it is worth noting that CCleaner can indeed remove Microsoft Office if you go to Tools > Uninstall, select Microsoft Office from the list of applications and uninstall it, they would have assumed that it is unlikely that you would have gone through such a multi-step process without remembering it:

In a followup the following morning, customer support suggested that your issue may have been related to Performance Optimizer putting a Microsoft Office service to sleep, and gave instructions on how to "wake it up" if that was indeed interfering with the operation of Microsoft Office on your computer.  But you closed the case saying that you thought it was probably actually Windows 10 updates causing your issue.

I can see that you raised another ticket on the same issue on Wednesday evening and support again provided you with instructions on how to wake up programs that you may have put to sleep in Performance Optimizer.  Can I check if you have had a chance to try what was suggested?