The latest news related to CCleaner were not good. Malware embedded in its 32-bit executable, vulnerabilities in the development chain, and a rather poor response from its creators shook the software hard. The last update corrected (supposedly) all its security problems, however, we shouldn't forget that there is an option to optimize the cleaning functions with CCEnhancer, a program that downloads and installs a new database.
Despite the serious security incident that affected CCleaner (and that apparently targeted very high-profile companies), its use will not disappear overnight. Beyond doubts about the usefulness of its registry cleaning, the truth is that the function to delete temporary files is welcome, and the best part is that it can be expanded thanks to an alternative database. I refer to a modified copy of the winapp2.ini file, which contains references to hundreds of programs that have the habit of generating temporary or "orphan" files.
There are many sources that offer this winapp2.ini, but one of the easiest ways to get it is through the CCEnhancer application. The first time we talked about it was in 2010, and it's good to know that its basic process hasn't changed. CCEnhancer detects the CCleaner installation, and with a simple click injects the latest version of winapp2.ini into its main folder. The next time we start CCleaner and go to the applications tab we will see that the cleaning options are more numerous, and that they will be accompanied by a small asterisk (these are the new entries).
CCEnhancer allows us to keep winapp2.ini updated easily, and also enables a special optimization parameter so that the new database doesn't affect CCleaner's startup time (a detail that is very noticeable on more modest computers). I understand that some users no longer trust CCleaner after the backdoor party, but whoever decides to continue using it has the possibility of squeezing it to the maximum.
(Editor's note: VirusTotal reports 2/63 for the executable, but they are false positives.)
