Registry cleaner

[Guest]

I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over 1.000
errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one pretty much
said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a registry fix, and
if so, what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other computer?
Thanks

 

[R. McCarty]

Most likely those keys/values aren't of significant importance. They
(1000) are things like MRUs ( Most Recently Used ) or other types
of temporary/workspace items. UNLESS, you've installed and then
uninstalled MANY applications your Registry is fine as it is.

Registry cleaning is an itch best left unscratched. The risks far exceed
the benefits. I've had to repair a number of machines that wouldn't
have been on the workbench if it hadn't been for a Registry cleaning.
Based on my experience there's about a 10-15% chance that any run
of a Registry cleaner will remove keys/values that will break something.
The problem is the errors may not appear for weeks or months after
the being used.

Kim Komando should stop advertising Registry Cleaners. Her "Paul
Harvey type" populist advice is sometimes outright dangerous.

 

[John John]

Are you having any Windows problems? There is nothing wrong with your
registry! If you want registry problems then use those "Registry
Cleaners". Most of those cleaners are snake oil programs peddled by
less than honest hucksters!

John

 

[Guest]

Hi sleepygirl,
I'd advise you (like the others here) to avoid registry cleaners. I recently
installed the much mooted Crap C. and I had to do a system restore to recover
from it's actions.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over
1.000
errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one pretty
much
said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a registry fix,
and
if so, what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other computer?
Thanks

Why do you think you need to clean your registry?

What specific problems are you actually experiencing (not some program's
bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can be fixed by using a
registry cleaner? If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry,
it would be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the
specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. After all,
why use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally, the
manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely to have
the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make multiple
changes simultaneously.

The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of the
computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the device
drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the registry can
have severe consequences. One should not even turning loose a poorly
understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully confident that he knows
*exactly* what is going to happen as a result of each and every change.
Having seen the results of inexperienced people using automated registry
"cleaners," I can only advise all but the most experienced computer
technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all. Experience has shown me
that such tools simply are not safe in the hands of the inexperienced user.

The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge and
Regedit.exe. If you lack the knowledge and experience to maintain your
registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and experience to
safely configure and use any automated registry cleaner, no matter how safe
they claim to be.

Further, no one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that the use
of an automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good. There's certainly been no
empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such products to
"clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance or stability.

I always use Regedit.exe. I trust my own experience and judgment far
more than I would any automated registry cleaner. I strongly encourage
others to acquire the knowledge, as well.


--
Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[R. McCarty]

The other point about Registry Cleaners is how subjective they are in
determining what to remove. If you installed say 3 or 4 cleaners and
just let them scan ( not remove ) it's doubtful you'd get matching lists
between any of them. There is also the re-run issue. Registry Cleaning
can be like peeling an onion. You run one a single time, removing the
items it finds. Immediately re-run that same cleaner and you'll likely see
another list of items to remove. The more you run them, the deeper
they drill into the Registry probably breaking even more interdependent
links and associations.

 

[Detlev Dreyer]

I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over
1.000 errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one
pretty much said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a
registry fix,

If ain't broken, don't fix it! Note that "registry errors" found by that
snake-oil is just what the software authors *believe* to be an error and
more than often, they are wrong. Running such tools may render your
applications and/or the entire system useless.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

Today, =?Utf-8?B?c2xlZXB5Z2lybA==?= made these interesting
comments ...

I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I
had over 1.000 errors. I also downloaded a trial version of
RegCur. That one pretty much said the same thing. Can
someone tell me if I should use a registry fix, and if so,
what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other
computer? Thanks

I use JV16 Powertools to interactively clean my Registry once a
month or so, but I am VERY careful to the point of paranoia about
taking steps to minimize my risk, starting with setting a System
Restore Point.

What are you attempting to accomplish with this? Is your system
running slow or is it unstable? Unless/until you are VERY sure of
what you're doing AND you not only set RPs but you periodically
create an image backup of your C:\partition, you're better off NOT
messing with the Registry at all.

 

[Rock]

I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over
1.000
errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one pretty
much
said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a registry fix,
and
if so, what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other computer?

Add my opinion to the litany. Do not use a registry cleaner. They cause
more harm than good. If there is a problem that points to the registry,
where a setting needs to be removed or changed, that should be done manually
for that particular setting. But there is no advantage to wholesale
"cleaning" and what's worse you can have unexplained problems as a result.

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi SleepyGirl - In my experience all of these Reg cleaners, even the best,
are fraught with danger. I advise against using them except in one specific
instance, that is when you have one that is capable of doing specific Reg
searches, and you NEED (not just WANT) to remove the remaining traces of
something that didn't get uninstalled correctly. (and you didn't have
foresight enough to install it using Total Uninstall, here:
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/files/tun235.zip, in the first
place.) (As an aside, there are, however, some third party Registry Editors
which can be of great help with both the incorrect uninstall and with
certain malware problems, especially some of theCoolWebSearch types such as
the AppInit_DLLs variant of the about:blank version of CWS, for example. I
can recommend Registrar Lite, here:
http://www.resplendence.com/reglite .)

There are a couple of specific bugs that can cause abnormal growth in either
the System or Software hives; however, they are rare, and unless these hives
in %SystemRoot%\System32\config are very, very large (in the hundreds of
megabytes), then I would council you to leave your Registry alone except for
the special circumstances I mentioned above.

I and most other MVP's that I know believe that Registry modifications of
any type are probably best done manually, very carefully, with a thorough
knowledge of what's installed on your machine, and what you're doing, and
then only when necessary. There's very little (if any!) noticeable benefit
in either space saving or speed achievable by cleaning out the Registry
except in those few cases where there's a specific problem the client is
experiencing (usually uninstall or malware related in my experience) that
needs to be fixed.

Lastly, if you must screw around with your Registry, then at least get
Erunt/Erdnt, and run it before you do the Reg clean. You'll then have a
true restore available to you. Read below to see why you might not just
using the Reg cleaner's restore:

Get Erunt here for all NT-based computers including XP:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/I've set it up to take a
scheduled backup each night at 12:01AM on a weekly round-robin basis, and a
Monthly on the 1st of each month. See here for how to set that up:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt, and for some
useful information about this subject.

This program is one of the best things around - saved my butt on many
occasions, and will also run very nicely from a DOS prompt (in case you've
done something that won't let you boot any more and need to revert to a
previous Registry) IF you're FAT32 OR have a DOS startup disk with NTFS
write drivers in an NTFS system. (There is also a way using the Recovery
Console to get back to being "bootable" even without separate DOS write NTFS
drivers, after which you can do a "normal" Erdnt restore.) (BTW, it also
includes a Registry defragger program). Free, and very, very highly
recommended.

FYI, quoting from the above document:

"Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to make a
complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the whole registry
(for example, no information from the "SECURITY" hive is saved), nor can the
exported file be used later to replace the current registry with the old
one. Instead, if you re-import the file, it is merged with the current
registry, leaving you with an absolute mess of old and new registry keys.

FWIW, the second question I ask clients is whether they've recently used a
Reg Cleaner or tried to restore from one. (The first question I ask is
whether they've any non-commercial Norton/Symantec software installed.
) )

--
Regards, Jim Byrd,
My Blog, Defending Your Machine,
http://defendingyourmachine.blogspot.com/



In sleepygirl <[email protected]> typed:
|| I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had
|| over 1.000 errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur.
|| That one pretty much said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I
|| should use a registry fix, and if so, what is the best one? Also,
|| can I use it on my other computer? Thanks

 

[Guest]

dear sleepygril you should visit your nearist tex and get some help in
helping you to deside the wrigt actions to take in solving youre registration
probles oh yes and you should get a good virus programe and acompining lisece
before you go blindly downloding things I know this by my oen practisess in
the past. also geting your system backed up on a dvd burner will help you and
your tec. and even before you talk to youre tec make notes on the vilations
and the kind of activity you were doing in your reident programs when you got
the thrat notess you may notice that each file has a hole lot of tec jargen
atached to the file in the registry scaner programe you can use this
infermation when you seek for youre help ps runing to many virus progams or
regcure programs is not a wise thing to do becuse thay will not alwas agree
in there fontions i hope this can help you. wam.

 

[Curt Christianson]

Now, "spell checkers" are a whole new subject that may/should be discussed.
<s>

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
www.aumha.org
Practically Nerded,...
http://dundats.mvps.org/Index.htm

| dear sleepygril you should visit your nearist tex and get some help in
| helping you to deside the wrigt actions to take in solving youre
registration
| probles oh yes and you should get a good virus programe and acompining
lisece
| before you go blindly downloding things I know this by my oen practisess
in
| the past. also geting your system backed up on a dvd burner will help you
and
| your tec. and even before you talk to youre tec make notes on the
vilations
| and the kind of activity you were doing in your reident programs when you
got
| the thrat notess you may notice that each file has a hole lot of tec
jargen
| atached to the file in the registry scaner programe you can use this
| infermation when you seek for youre help ps runing to many virus progams
or
| regcure programs is not a wise thing to do becuse thay will not alwas
agree
| in there fontions i hope this can help you. wam.
|
| "sleepygirl" wrote:
|
| > I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over
1.000
| > errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one pretty
much
| > said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a registry
fix, and
| > if so, what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other computer?
| > Thanks

 

[Curt Christianson]

There will *always* reg cleaners that purport to clean "everything", and
some others that will try to do there best.

NO ONE reg cleaner can fix them all...There will always be some claim that I
could not get rid of "XYZ" until I d/l the "Be all and End all of Reg
Clesners, and now is fine. This is :snake-oil at its best

I've only been using computers for seven years, knew nothing to start with,
but through a great deal for perusing these ng's, and reading, I have never
had a problem with viruses, trojans, scans registry bloat etc.

There very bottom-line, as is true in so many aspects in life--you get what
you pay for.

P.S> There are **Plenty** of great products out there that meet or exceed
what they claim--and entirely free!

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
www.aumha.org
Practically Nerded,...
http://dundats.mvps.org/Index.htm

| dear sleepygril you should visit your nearist tex and get some help in
| helping you to deside the wrigt actions to take in solving youre
registration
| probles oh yes and you should get a good virus programe and acompining
lisece
| before you go blindly downloding things I know this by my oen practisess
in
| the past. also geting your system backed up on a dvd burner will help you
and
| your tec. and even before you talk to youre tec make notes on the
vilations
| and the kind of activity you were doing in your reident programs when you
got
| the thrat notess you may notice that each file has a hole lot of tec
jargen
| atached to the file in the registry scaner programe you can use this
| infermation when you seek for youre help ps runing to many virus progams
or
| regcure programs is not a wise thing to do becuse thay will not alwas
agree
| in there fontions i hope this can help you. wam.
|
| "sleepygirl" wrote:
|
| > I downoaded a trial version of registry fix, and it aid that I had over
1.000
| > errors. I also downloaded a trial version of RegCur. That one pretty
much
| > said the same thing. Can someone tell me if I should use a registry
fix, and
| > if so, what is the best one? Also, can I use it on my other computer?
| > Thanks

 

[Plato]

There will *always* reg cleaners that purport to clean "everything", and
some others that will try to do there best.

EasyCleaner is the most conservative of them all. Totally free and I've
never known it to phark up a system.

http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/files/EClea2_0.exe