Performance drop after installing CCleaner

[Samhildánach]

Hi there!

I have done something really stupid and I'm hoping that someone can offer valuable advise.

Back in the old days, CCleaner used to be a rather beneficial program. I remembered and downloaded it for no particular reason. My Malwarebytes advised against it, but I ignored te warning.

A day or so after installing, I wanted to play a game (AC Oddysey). I have been playing that for a while on pretty high graphics with no problem whatsoever. But from that accursed moment on, I experience a huge decrease of performance. It is super annoying.

I only let CCleaner scan, but I didn't get it to clean up anything. And I unstalled it after two days or so, because I started to realise it wasn't any good anymore.

I've tried a system recovery, but unfortunately there is no recovery point available pre-CCLeaner. The only system recovy I can perform would put CCleaner back.

CCleaner is the only out-of-ordinary thing I did recently.

Does anyone have a clue how to restore my pc again? Thanks!

[nullable]

Well what's the actual performance difference?

What are your system specs?

There's always a chance it's just a coincidental issue. After all correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. But some mroe details and a bit of troubleshooting might help give you an answer.

Ultimate worst case scenario, you wipe the c: drive and reinstall Windows. That ought to take care of any OS level issues. But plenty of options to try before that too.

[Samhildánach]

Thank you for replying.
Which system specs would be helpful? Here are some, I hope they are relevant.

Windows 11 Home: 23H2
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.59 GHz
16GB RAM
64bit
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

In terms of performance; I had AC Odyssey itself create a benchmark report. At its low the game ran 14 FPS, which I feel is typical for the gameplay now. It kind of goes in waves: Normal FPS, and then low again. Super annoying.

What kind of troubleshooting would be helpful here?

[Richard Shadow]

I would format the hard drive and reinstall your operating system. Don't install free junk. You get what you pay for. And sometimes you get more than that, like viruses. I am not suggesting that happened to you but to be sure I would do a fresh operating install and make a restore point right away AND EVERY TIME ****BEFORE YOU INSTALL SOMETHING.****