Ccleaner Changing Settings By Itself

[SuperTRev]

I want to know why Ccleaner keeps re-enabling smart cleaning and enabling usage data tracking, every time I disable them.

Recently I've been defending Ccleaner.  Everyone keeps telling me this program is malware.  Then in the middle of those discussions, I come across this program illegally forcing data tracking.  So now what am I supposed to think.

[nukecad]

The only times that I know that to happen is if you reinstall, or if you click on 'Restore default settings' in Options>Advanced.

Can you give more details of what you are doing when you say that this happens for you?

Do you have a ccleaner.ini file? And if so then is 'Save all settings to INI file' still ticked?
(If an ini is used and then that setting later unticked then CCleaner will continue to use the last ini file that was made before you unticked it, meaning that any further changes you make to the settings will not be saved because when you open CCleaner again the settings will revert to what is in your saved ini file).

[SuperTRev]

Ok, I didn't know about the INI file.  Don't know what that is.  I can't find a Ccleaner user manual either.

So that box wasn't checked.  I just checked it now and I assume that will fix it.  Assuming checking the box makes it create a new ini file for itself.  I will keep an eye on Spybot S&D scans to make sure it isn't deleting any files like this that are needed.  Thanks for the help.

[nukecad]

Yes, the ini file keeps a record of what settings you have changed and loads it into CCleaner when you start it.

So if you have now ticked that box then any settings you now change will be saved to the ccleaner.ini and reloaded next time you open CCleaner.

You can manually make a copy of a particular ini file in File Explorer, so that if you need/want to you can go back to the settings saved in it.
(I have my own settings backed up in that way, so that when I change my settings to help with a question here I can fairly quickly use that backup copy to undo those changes).
It's also possible for advanced users to make further customisations in the ini file itself, but usually that is done in the winapp2.ini (if you have one) rather than the CCleaner.ini

What it does mean is that if you already made a CCleaner.ini by ticking the 'Save all settings as an INI file' and then untick it again, CCleaner will no longer update that existing ini - and so any further settings changes that you do make will be overwritten by the existing ccleaner.ini when it loads.
So if you are going to change settings and want the changes to stick then you either have to:
Have that 'Save all ...' box ticked, so that it saves your changes to ccleaner.ini,
(That's the preferred way to do it).
or
Leave the 'Save all ...' box unticked, and delete any existing ccleaner.ini file so that there isn't one to load.
(The problem with that seccond one is that if you have to reinstall CCleaner the settings will revert to default, and they might revert during an update too).

The user Manuals/FAQ's can be found here (scroll down and click the box that you want): https://support.ccleaner.com/s/?language=en_US
CCleaner 'How to' videos on various topics and settings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsL9Q1gZ6XzSx3twnszuUg

 

[SuperTRev]

On 27/03/2024 at 07:19, nukecad said:

Yes, the ini file keeps a record of what settings you have changed and loads it into CCleaner when you start it.

So if you have now ticked that box then any settings you now change will be saved to the ccleaner.ini and reloaded next time you open CCleaner.

 

Ok good.  I didn't know about that setting.  I've checked and the settings haven't reverted back to default since I enabled that ini file.  So that's the fix.

The reason I was concerned about it, is something is conflicting with my third party firewall, Portmaster.  I think it's either Ccleaner or Spybot.  So I kept trying to disable Ccleaner's live monitoring (smart cleaning), to isolate the variables, to see if it was Spybot or not.  I think it is; I have a support ticket with them.

Thanks for the help.