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CCleaner tops our list of free registry cleaners for several good reasons. Besides being completely free and working with all versions of Windows, two more things really stand out.

For one thing, I have never seen CCleaner cause a problem in the Windows registry, which some less well-made registry repair tools do on a regular basis. And secondly, because it is optionally available in a portable form factor (that is, it does not need to be installed).

Read our full CCleaner review below for a list of features, pros and cons, my opinions on the program, and some basic instructions, or head straight to their download page linked above.

Please download CCleaner only from Piriform's website (CCleaner.com), which we have linked above! There are malware that look and look like CCleaner but charge for cleaning. See why is CCleaner asking me to pay? for more.

This review is from CCleaner v5.67.7763, which was released on May 28, 2020. Please let us know if there is a newer version that we need to review.

Learn more about CCleaner

The most recent version of CCleaner works with 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 8 (including Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update), and Windows 7.

Three installation methods are available:

The "standard installer" is a complete installation of CCleaner, which includes an option to also install CCleaner Browser, another program from Piriform.

"Portable", which we recommend, does not require any installation.

"Slim" is the same as the normal installation option, but without the option of installing additional software.

CCleaner is actually more than just a registry cleaning tool. It's probably more accurately called a system cleaner because it cleans a lot more than your registry.

When it comes to registry cleaning functions, CCleaner , like all registry cleaners, is primarily concerned with removing Windows registry entries that refer to files, programs, or other resources that no longer exist.

For example, CCleaner will delete registry keys and registry values that point to programs and files that no longer exist in Windows. These capabilities are exactly why running CCleaner, or another well-designed registry cleaner, is a great troubleshooting step for a "file missing" or "cannot find a file" type of error. ", especially when Windows starts up.

Specifically, CCleaner will remove registry entries that point to the following if they no longer exist: DLL files, file extensions, ActiveX objects, type libraries, applications and application paths, fonts, help files , installers, software, MUI cache, sound events, and services.

Apart from the registry, CCleaner also deletes temporary browser data such as cookies, history and cache from all popular browsers. You can also do things like empty trash, clear MRU lists, clear thumbnail cache in Windows, delete old core dumps and log files, and much more.

CCleaner also has a Tools area where you can uninstall programs, view and change programs that start with Windows, find and delete files that take up a lot of space drive, find duplicate files, delete restore points, and even wipe a drive.

Advantages and disadvantages of CCleaner

As you can see, there is a lot to like about CCleaner:

Advantages:

Installs quickly

Several installation options

Keeps cookies that it knows you probably don't want to delete (like Webmail logins)

Adding an inconspicuous context menu to the trash

Long history of regular program updates

A backup file is created before any modification of the registry

Killer feature set

Can avoid scanning registry keys and values you ask it to skip

Support for macOS 10.8 and later

Available as an Android app

The inconvenients:

The standard download page is confusing and makes the program appear to cost money, which it does not

The normal installer will add another program to your computer, unless you explicitly deny it.

Thoughts on CCleaner

If it's not already obvious, I love CCleaner. It's tiny, fast, and complete. It doesn't advertise to fix every problem under the sun like many "registry repair" tools do. He does what he does and that's good enough. I like this.

I really like that there are several ways to "install" CCleaner. And while I'm generally a huge fan of portable programs, one of the perks of installing CCleaner is adding Run CCleaner and Open CCleaner right click options to your Trash. If you plan to use CCleaner for general system cleaning, this is a very handy feature.

My only real complaint about CCleaner is the confusing download page, which you can see here. While we have a link to their much clearer builds page elsewhere in this review, the standard CCleaner download page most people find themselves on is a bit confusing.

At first glance, their download page looks like you have to pay for CCleaner if you want it to do anything. In fact, I regularly get emails stating that CCleaner is not free. However, it's free, but you can choose to pay for their Professional or Business Edition versions to get personal support, a software update, and a few other features. CCleaner Free works 100% and will not ask you to pay anything to clean the registry or other files (but some settings in the free version only work if you have Pro).

It should be clear that while CCleaner is completely free, it is only free for home users. Professional versions of CCleaner are required if you plan to use the program in anything but a personal / personal scenario.

Another trivial problem I have with CCleaner is that at the very beginning of the installer you are asked if you want to install another program with CCleaner. I saw another Piriform and Avast program! Free Antivirus announced here, but others could be too. If you don't want anything other than CCleaner, uncheck / deny any programs mentioned, then continue to install CCleaner normally.

In summary, if you think a registry cleaner is necessary to fix a computer problem you are having, I highly recommend that you choose CCleaner. If you are interested in some of the others Really cool system cleaning features, know that among these programs, CCleaner is also probably your best bet. It is simply a fantastic program.

Piriform, the company behind CCleaner, also makes a number of other free and highly rated system programs like Recuva, which is a free data recovery tool, and Defraggler, a completely free defragmentation program and Speccy, a utility from free system information.

How to use CCleaner

CCleaner is easy to install. Just go to their builds page and choose the installation option you want.

Choose the standard installer or the slim version to install CCleaner as you would any normal program. Choose the portable version if you want to run CCleaner from a flash drive or just prefer not to install yet another program on your computer. You will need to unzip the program before running it in this case.

Once it's up and running, follow these steps to clean the registry:

Select the Registry icon on the left.

Under the Registry Cleaner heading, make sure all options are checked.

If you have a good idea of what you would like CCleaner to "clean" from the registry, then by all means limit the selection. For example, if you receive an error when Windows starts up about a program that you no longer have installed, you can probably only leave the Run at startup option checked.

Choose Find Problems. CCleaner has finished scanning your registry for unnecessary entries when the green progress bar at the top of the screen reaches 100%.

If you decide to cancel the mid-term scan, perhaps because it is taking too long to complete, you can always correct what was found before canceling it.

Choose Resolve selected issues.

Although all registry entries found by CCleaner are checked by default, you can uncheck any entries you want to keep. One of the big advantages of CCleaner over its competition is that it doesn't go too far. You are probably sure to delete anything it finds.

Select Yes in the dialog box that asks "Do you want to back up the registry before making any changes?"

If you are not prompted to back up the registry, you can make sure that you are next time by enabling Show prompt to back up registry issues in Options> Advanced.

Choose an appropriate location to save the REG file, and then choose Save.

This REG file can be used to revert the changes CCleaner is about to make to the registry. See How to restore the Windows registry if you later decide to use REG backup.

On the next screen, choose Fix all selected issues.

You can also choose Fix Problem to delete each entry one by one, but you are probably not sure which entries to keep or delete. Fortunately, CCleaner does a good job of figuring this out for you, so OFF is best to remove them all at once, especially if there are hundreds or thousands of them.

Select Close when all changes are complete. It may take a second or two, or even several seconds, depending on the number of registry keys that CCleaner deletes or modifies and the speed of your computer.

It is now safe to close CCleaner or perform another system cleaning task with the program.

It is a good idea, however, to repeat the above steps again even if you just finished cleaning the registry with CCleaner. Repeated crawl is necessary because some items that were previously deleted may create other objects to be deleted, in which case only a second crawl (or a third or a fourth, etc.) is needed to delete these new orphaned entries.

If you run an additional scan and the results are the same as the previous scan (that is, the same entries were deleted in both cases), you can stop repeating the cleaning process. This can happen if a process needs these entries, and therefore the system is rebuilding them even after deleting them.

CCleaner is fully documented on the Piriform website and is a great resource if you need help.

Piriform's CCleaner Professional Plus is just one of the many debugging utilities that can breathe new life into a heavily used PC. It has many system enhancing features including registry repairer and real time system monitoring as well as additional features like privacy protection and drive wiping tools. CCleaner is more expensive than Windows 10's free built-in debugging tools, but it comes at a lower price than some competing products, offers features that dramatically improved our test bench boot time, and is sufficiently easy to use to make it worth it. Still, Iolo System Mechanic remains the choice of editors in the category due to its in-depth cleaning tools and unlimited licenses.