Expert view please on registry cleaners

[Guest]

Hello experts only,

What is the considered view on using registry cleaners on Windows XP?
Always a bad idea so leave totally alone ?
Or, if beneficial when using a specific cleaning program in a certain way,
please share the details.

Thanks a lot,
Lee
England

 

[Wesley Vogel]

If you have a really good idea of what you are doing in the registry in the
first place, a registry cleaner is a tool that can help automate some of the
manual tasks of cleaning the registry.

I you do NOT have any idea of what you would be doing using a registry
cleaner, leave them alone.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Guest]

thanks Wes,

I understand the principles of why the registry may need 'cleaning',
including things such as deleting old entries which no longer point anywhere.
I believe such cleaning can improve the overall response of the computer as
observed by the user.
However I wouldn't be confident or competent in manually editing the
registry using Regedit.
Does that help at all to place where I am?

I'm aware, for example, of two free 'cleaners', Easycleaner by Toniarts and
Regseeker by Hoverdesk. I've used them before without finding any _apparently
significant_ problems as a result, but I was never totally sure what they may
have done behind the scenes, so to speak. I ran them and deleted everything
they flagged up, although Easycleaner is greatly more cautious than Regseeker
in what it 'finds'.

I'm asking now, having just reformated and reinstalled XP, so I can move
forwards in the 'right way'.

Thanks a lot,
Lee

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

***All*** so called Registry 'cleaners' can be more trouble than they are
worth - including making a system completely unbootable. My advice would be
to let XP manage the Registry by itself.

 

[Guest]

ok, thanks Will.

Anyone else have a different view?

Lee

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Lee,

I use EasyCleaner. EasyCleaner has a safety net, it can create UNDO-files.

*.reg files located here C:\Program Files\ToniArts\EasyCleaner\Undo

If you have Create undo file on delete selected in Options | Registry tab.

Registry
Create undo file on delete: Will undo file be created on deletion, with it
the deletions may be undone.
Undo levels: How many undo-files are saved (1 per session) at max. The more
you use registry cleaner the more should this be.
Save undo files to: Directory where the undo-files will be saved.
Confirm changes: Confirms deletions.

I know nothing of Regseeker.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello experts only,

What is the considered view on using registry cleaners on Windows XP?
Always a bad idea so leave totally alone ?
Or, if beneficial when using a specific cleaning program in a certain
way, please share the details.

I always recommend *against* the routine use of registry cleaners. Routine
cleaning of the registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry
alone and don't use a registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of, having
unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.


The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit it may
have.

 

[Guest]

ok thanks Wes,

Regseeker is a much more powerful cleaner, in that it finds many 'problems',
often hundreds during a scan. It too creates backups of a clean.
As well as offering similar functions to Easycleaner its registry clean
flags up 'green' and 'red' items for deletion. I forget from memory which are
which but one of those categories is considered 'safe to delete' and the
other 'possibly not'.

My problem is that if I use Easycleaner I always think 'hmm Regseeker finds
many more entries to clean, but I don't know if such vigour is a good thing."
But then, with Regseeker, I find it essentially impossible to interpret what
the actual items do/mean that are flagged up for deletion. The display tells
you its name and registry location etc but of course the significance of such
details is lost on me.

I guess I could use Regseeker as I have done before, and try to carefully
monitor the XP performance for a few days afterwards; ie if then in any doubt
restore the backup.
I guess though I've always been assuming that a good/undamaged registry is
one where it is fairly obvious to the user in terms of XP bits and pieces
working with apparent good speed.
But is this the case? Can a far-reaching registry clean in fact cause
problems which may not be apparent in typicaLday-to-day use, but nonetheless
important in some way?

I think I'm pursuing this issue mainly through the belief that a manually
maintained registry performed correctly must be a good thing, rather than
doing nothing to it at all.

Lee

Lee,

I use EasyCleaner. EasyCleaner has a safety net, it can create UNDO-files. [snip]

I know nothing of Regseeker.

In news:[email protected],

lee <[email protected]> hunted and pecked:

thanks Wes,

I understand the principles of why the registry may need 'cleaning',
including things such as deleting old entries which no longer point
anywhere. I believe such cleaning can improve the overall response of the
computer as observed by the user.
However I wouldn't be confident or competent in manually editing the
registry using Regedit.
Does that help at all to place where I am?

I'm aware, for example, of two free 'cleaners', Easycleaner by Toniarts
and Regseeker by Hoverdesk. I've used them before without finding any
_apparently significant_ problems as a result, but I was never totally
sure what they may have done behind the scenes, so to speak. I ran them
and deleted everything they flagged up, although Easycleaner is greatly
more cautious than Regseeker in what it 'finds'.

I'm asking now, having just reformated and reinstalled XP, so I can move
forwards in the 'right way'.

Thanks a lot,
Lee

 

[Guest]

Thanks Ken,

Am I right in thinking that the registry maintenance programs out there only
detect and offer for deletion 'probably unused entries' ?
ie there is nothing to 'fix' a registry, which presumably would be more
useful?

I assume though that it would be hard for any program to know what really
needs 'fixing' from one user's system to another. Even if it could restore
the XP defaults presumably that would be pointless as it would cause XP to
lose recogniton of and settings for any user installed applications.

Lee

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks Ken,

You're welcome. Glad to help.

Am I right in thinking that the registry maintenance programs out
there only detect and offer for deletion 'probably unused entries' ?

Basically yes.

ie there is nothing to 'fix' a registry, which presumably would be
more useful?

No. the registry doesn't need fixing. It's only vendors of registry fixing
programs that try to convince you otherwise.

 

[Guest]

lee wrote:




Basically yes.




No. the registry doesn't need fixing. It's only vendors of registry fixing
programs that try to convince you otherwise.

ok, thanks again.

Is it fair to say then that (even if damage is not caused) a registry clean
will not result in a discernable improvement in pc performance?
Or, there are indeed such benefits but only if an expert was to use their
knowledge and judgement on what to manually delete?

Lee

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

ok, thanks again.

You're welcome.

Is it fair to say then that (even if damage is not caused) a registry
clean will not result in a discernable improvement in pc performance?

Yes. Think of it as a filing cabinet in an office. If you have extra files
in it that you don't need, you could save some space by getting rid of them,
but keeping them wouldn't impact your ability to find what you wanted
quickly. In both cases (the registry and the filing cabinet), your access to
it is random. Only if you had to start at the beginning and go through all
of it one at a time until you came to what you want could there be an
improvement by getting rid of unused items.

And in the case of the registry, the extra space you could possibly save is
meaningless--a few pennies worth, at most.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

I like the filing cabinet analogy, Ken!

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I like the filing cabinet analogy, Ken!

Glad you liked it. Feel free to use it yourself.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Just now looking at my table next to my computer desk. Imagine dumping a
file cabinet drawer on a flat surface. Too bad none of the drawers in my
four drawer filing cabinet are empty. LOL

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Guest]

Glad you liked it. Feel free to use it yourself.

Yes, thanks for that. I can see what you're saying.

Lee

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Yes, thanks for that. I can see what you're saying.

You're welcome. Glad to help.