Avast acquires Piriform, makers of CCleaner

[lehnerus2000]

Avast just announced that the company has acquired the software company Piriform, best known for the software program CCleaner for Windows.

Piriform's flagship product is CCleaner, a temporary file cleaner and traces remover for Windows. The company has created other respectable programs such as Speccy, a hardware inventory software, Defraggler, a file defragmentation program, and Recuva, a file recovery application.

The company started out as a producer of high quality Windows programs, but has created an Android and Mac OS X version of CCleaner in the past to branch out to other platforms.

According to Avast's announcement, CCleaner is used by 130 million users of which 15 million are using the Android version of the application.

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/07/19/avast-acquires-piriform-makers-of-ccleaner/

 

[Brds7t7]

I hope they don't incorporate it into their Internet Security suite then kill the standalone product. That would be a real shame, as it's always been a great piece of software.

 

[Sky Ranch]

Is it me or was "Complete Cleaning" offered for free?

 

[Layback Bear]

Well we all need to be watchful.

I fears are that Avast will screw up Ccleaner and Piriform other products.
Many formally anti virus program companies keep adding things to their anti virus programs and all we want is a quality anti virus program.
For me, if I want added programs I will chose which ones and when.

Jack

 

[axe0]

If this goes south, bye bye Ccleaner and Speccy.

 

[ranett]

If this goes south, bye bye Ccleaner and Speccy.

Yep, I use both too.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Is it me or was "Complete Cleaning" offered for free?

Yes, it was. Fortunately, I no longer need complete cleaning since I no longer have HDDs and can use Secure Erase to clean my SSDs if ever needed. Leave it to Avast to take a program and further screw it up. I hope they don't screw up Speccy!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Well we all need to be watchful.

I fears are that Avast will screw up Ccleaner and Piriform other products.
Many formally anti virus program companies keep adding things to their anti virus programs and all we want is a quality anti virus program.
For me, if I want added programs I will chose which ones and when.

Jack

What our friendly, neighborhood bear said!

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I've never needed anything more than tfc oldie but a keeper
TFC - Temp File Cleaner by OldTimer Download - Geeks to Go Forum

 

[Brds7t7]

Well we all need to be watchful.

I fears are that Avast will screw up Ccleaner and Piriform other products.
Many formally anti virus program companies keep adding things to their anti virus programs and all we want is a quality anti virus program.
For me, if I want added programs I will chose which ones and when.

Jack

I really hate how they keep trying to make these all-in-one solutions!
I just want the Anti-virus! No browser plugins, no software updaters, no disk cleaners (at least not theirs anyway).

I uncheck every piece of junk that they try and install with it. I don't need all the added garbage.

I'll be keeping hold of my old CCleaner installers as I can see this being retired in future, despite what Avast promises!

 

[lehnerus2000]

It's worrying as Avast Free AV has had weird glitches the past 3 or 4 months.

Until the last program update (a couple of days ago) I'd see a pop-up notification stating that my (scheduled) scan had been cancelled at 99%.
Manual Avast scans ran normally.

When this first happened I was worried that I'd been infected with malware, but MBAM didn't find anything.

Also, the Details button on the pop-up is actually a run scan button (this wasn't fixed in the last update).

 

[Melchior]

If this goes south, bye bye Ccleaner and Speccy.

YUP
THIS IS A DARKEST DAY IN THE HISTORY OF ONE OF THE INTERNETS BEST PROGRAM(S)!!

Piriform HAS SOLD OUT ITS CUSTOMERS!!!!!!!!!!!

WERE DOOMED!!!!

RIP CCleaner.

I use:
- CCleaner, many times every day.. and I use the payed Pro version.
- Defraggler, I use this every day too
- Speccy, once and a while..

 

[minesabeer]

Download the latest from Piriform if still avaliable, if not seach for 'old program versions' and get the latest versions you can find and tuck them away somewhere safe as I wouldn't trust Avast with this going on past history of what other companys have done when aquiring other companys software.

 

[BlueGuy]

Is it me or was "Complete Cleaning" offered for free?

I noticed that too, after the last alert that there was a new version, which I {foolishly now realise} installed it and never bothered to save the earlier versions, hoping that they're still kept over at FileHippo.

Download the latest from Piriform if still avaliable, if not seach for 'old program versions' and get the latest versions you can find and tuck them away somewhere safe as I wouldn't trust Avast with this going on past history of what other companys have done when aquiring other companys software.

Well, I started using EasyCleaner when I switched over from Atari TTs to Windows '98, then added Ccleaner as a compliment to it, as both have pretty well the same functions, like their own uninstall utilities. If Avast, which I hear can be a bugger to uninstall {again, have been using AVG since moving to Windows, just detest the all the false positives, forcing me to stop what I'm doing, look up details, before I tell it to protect me} as it leaves so many traces. Yet so many {white hat-the good guys} hacker forums, like MSFN, where I used to hang out, to keep my 2000Pro viable with .dll and kernel hacks {to which, like a wimp, surrendered to Win7 three years ago} have been using Avast as each of the others, free and paid have dropped support for the old OS. Though the brighter ones than I have been doing things like using the embedded XPPro kernel , used in point-of-sale {cash registers} versions to keep their favourite AVs. For me, that was just too much work, as explained previously.
EasyCleaner can still be found over at Majorgeeks and will be my fall-back if Ccleaner changes too much or gets nuked as a stand-alone product.

 

[MeOnMine]

I'll be back soon !
Just got something in my eye.

I have the last 6 and one Portable.
I'll trade you one speccy.

 

[FerchogtX]

It's worrying as Avast Free AV has had weird glitches the past 3 or 4 months.

Until the last program update (a couple of days ago) I'd see a pop-up notification stating that my (scheduled) scan had been cancelled at 99%.
Manual Avast scans ran normally.

When this first happened I was worried that I'd been infected with malware, but MBAM didn't find anything.

Also, the Details button on the pop-up is actually a run scan button (this wasn't fixed in the last update).

I feel you, latest version has SERIOUS issues with Hardware Assited Virtualization Tecnologies and programs (like VMWare Workstation) I had to revert back to version 17.2, because latest just made the system reboot unexpectedly when using a virtual machine... annoying as hell...

 

[lehnerus2000]

I feel you, latest version has SERIOUS issues with Hardware Assited Virtualization Tecnologies and programs (like VMWare Workstation) I had to revert back to version 17.2, because latest just made the system reboot unexpectedly when using a virtual machine... annoying as hell...

It's only an annoyance at the moment.

Which version of VMware Workstation are you using (I'm using v9)?

I got v12 via my TAFE's student software program, but it was buggy, so I re-imaged my PC.

 

[RoasterMen]

I stopped using avast! Free Anti-virus when they suddenly installed SafeZone without the user's consent.

 

[zaki]

thnx

 

[TechnoMage2016]

PC's are no longer my Vocation, but just a hobby. And I do love testing different programs including OS's and AV/AS software.

I've tested Avast and found it wanting. Twice, over several years, I tried CCleaner and both times it disabled my OS, demanding a Backup Image Restore to get my computer back. So that too is on my @#$% list. (expletive deleted by OP)
So it seems like everything from that parent company is just not on my list of favorite programs.

One program I HAVE tried and like, (the FREE Version) to the point of buying the Pro version, is, "Super Anti Spyware".
It will find and remove PUP's and Tracking Cookies that other programs don't even see. I run it almost daily, to keep the Tracking Cookies off of my PC.

Happy Computing Mates!
TechnoMage