CCleaner is one of the top apps of its kind

Oct 9, 2015 21:17 GMT  ·  By

There are million apps out there that can help keep your computer in tip-top shape and remove unnecessary temporary data or leftovers, and there is no doubt that CCleaner is one of the best.

But as far as Microsoft is concerned, CCleaner is not such an impressive app, and the company says that you'd better avoid it. Why exactly? Hard to tell, but it turns out that CCleaner isn't exactly Microsoft's cup of tea.

As reported by TheWindowsClub, Gov Maharaj, Principal Software Development Engineer at Microsoft, was performing troubleshooting in a live video session on Channel9 when he came across CCleaner installed on one user's computer. His reaction was a little bit unexpected:

“CCleaner is… how do I put it mildly… Don’t… let’s just move on!”

These apps could affect system performance

Such a statement could take many by surprise, especially because CCleaner has always been one of the best apps of its kind and millions of users rely on it to keep their computers in tip-top shape.

But Microsoft no longer recommends turning to registry cleaners or similar apps to clean Windows 10 because they could affect system performance.

“Some products such as registry cleaning utilities suggest that the registry needs regular maintenance or cleaning. However, serious issues can occur when you modify the registry incorrectly using these types of utilities. These issues might require users to reinstall the operating system due to instability. Microsoft cannot guarantee that these problems can be solved without a reinstallation of the Operating System as the extent of the changes made by registry cleaning utilities varies from application to application,” the company says in a FAQ.

And yet, there's no doubt that this isn't going to stop the millions of users running CCleaner from still relying on it for secure cleaning purposes, but it's clearly interesting to see a Microsoft engineer opposing such a popular app.