Piriform has released CCleaner 4.01 and CCleaner Portable 4.01, a minor update to its popular Windows freeware system cleaning tool. Version 4.01 is the first release since version 4.0 split users into free and paid-for camps by restricting product features to Pro license holders only.

Most of version 4.01’s tweaks are available to both free and paid-for users, and revolve around improving existing tools and adding cleaning support to several new applications.

Improvements in CCleaner 4.01 revolve around better support for existing browsers: there’s improved cleaning for Google Chrome’s History along with better compatibility with Internet Explorer 10 and later builds of Firefox (version 19 and upward).

CCleaner’s new duplicate file finder tool gets a few tweaks with the latest release.

Windows 8 users should benefit from improved Registry cleaning thanks to an optimised cleaning algorithm, while both new tools introduced in version 4.0 – the Duplicate File Finder and Pro-only System and Browser Monitoring feature – also gain unspecified enhancements and optimisations.

Application-specific cleaning has been further developed too: added in version 4.01 are support for Adobe Acrobat XI, VSO Blu-ray and DVD Converter Ultimate, Oxygen XML Editor 1.4 and Connectify Hotspot, while two tools already supported – Mailwasher Pro and Google Earth – both gain improved cleaning.

The update is rounded off with the usual minor tweaks and bug fixes. CCleaner 4.01.4093 and CCleaner Portable 4.01.4093 are both available as free-for-personal-use downloads for PCs running Windows XP or later. Pro licenses are currently available for $24.95, a saving of $8 on the MSRP.