Registry Cleaners?

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Cla=A7=A7ified?=]

Hi All,

Any recommendations for Registry Cleaners, preferably free.

Sim

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Sim

Windows XP looks after the Registry by itself. Some of these so called
Registry 'cleaners' can, and do, cause more problems than they are worth -
including rendering a system unbootable. May I suggest that you let XP
carry on looking after its Registry.

 

[Guest]

Will Denny is absolutely right. When it comes to registry cleaners forXP,
your best option is "none of the above."

 

[Stan Brown]

Any recommendations for Registry Cleaners, preferably free.

One word: don't.

(There's a thread about this once a day, or more often.
http://groups.google.com is your friend.)

 

[Kelly]

Ditto.

--
In memory of our dear friend, MVP Alex Nichol: http://www.dts-l.org/

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[James]

in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:



One word: don't.

(There's a thread about this once a day, or more often.
http://groups.google.com is your friend.)

I like Reg Seeker.

 

[Guest]

Windows XP looks after the Registry by itself. Some of these so called
Registry 'cleaners' can, and do, cause more problems than they are worth -
including rendering a system unbootable. May I suggest that you let XP
carry on looking after its Registry.

I agree 100% with your recommendation, but in what specific ways does XP
actually look after the registry by itself? Is there a Micrsoft knowledge
base article, or other good link, that gives further infomation about this
topic?

Ken

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi All,

Any recommendations for Registry Cleaners, preferably free.

Sim

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 consider
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.

What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt will be fixed by using an automated 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. Why
use a shotgun 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.

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:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[david]

Bruce, I am going to jump in here with a comment and question.

I have fixed several of my problems by using regedit after reading info in
this forum, other forums, MS kb articles, and so on. The first was an
OE/Outlook conflict and the most recent was the full removal of MSAS from
the registry. It was an interesting exercise. I thank everyone for their
help. However, where can one get the additional knowledge to satisfy your
statement, "The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe." Is there a book or white paper somewhere that covers this
subject in more detail? Although I have learned some things, I probably know
enough to be dangerous if I am not very careful. I would like some more
organized information if exists.

David

 

[Will Denny]

Hi David

It's not as easy as a 'white book'. There are books that can give a basic
understanding of the Registry. I learnt by the hard way - experiment, if
alterations to the Registry screws your system up - don't do it again!!!!

 

[Guest]

I have fixed several of my problems by using regedit after reading info in
this forum, other forums, MS kb articles, and so on. The first was an
OE/Outlook conflict and the most recent was the full removal of MSAS from
the registry. It was an interesting exercise. I thank everyone for their
help. However, where can one get the additional knowledge to satisfy your
statement, "The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe." Is there a book or white paper somewhere that covers this
subject in more detail? Although I have learned some things, I probably know
enough to be dangerous if I am not very careful. I would like some more
organized information if exists.

Such information is hard to find. There is a good book by a guy named
Honeywell (forget his first name) about the Windows registry (published by
Microsoft Press, generally available in bookstores), but if you are looking
for more specific information about what manual changes you can make to the
registry that will make your computer faster, more stable, more secure, etc.,
I don't think it exists. There are lots of "registry tweaks" that you can
find over the Internet, but much of it, frankly, is snake oil.

The plain truth is that the registry is loaded into ultra fast RAM when your
computer boots up (which, incidentally, is why registry changes often require
a reboot before they become effective), so whatever marginal performance
improvements you might achieve are measured at best in nanoseconds (which are
not transparent to a human being). However, if you make a mistake in
deleting some entry in order to gain those few nanoseconds, you will spend
minutes or hours trying to correct it. That's why messing with the registry,
either manually or through a so-called registry cleaner, is about the very
last thing anyone seeking improved performance or stability should do. You
are better off taking very good care of your hard drive (regular error
checking, disk cleanup, and defragmentation) or, even better yet, getting
more RAM.

Having said all that, there is one registry tweak (and only one) that I
think really does give a small but noticeable improvement in performance. If
you have more than 512 MB of RAM, enable the setting under the Memory
Management key that disables paging of executables by changing the value from
0 to 1. This setting forces XP to keep executable code in the RAM system
cache instead of flushing it to the hard drive, even when it is not
immediately needed. Anything that stays in the system cache is going to load
much faster the next time you run the program. But again, you need lots of
memory for this tweak to have any real impact on performance. 512 MB is the
bare minimum.

Ken

 

[Bob]

You probably can find several books at Amazon.

Bruce, I am going to jump in here with a comment and question.

I have fixed several of my problems by using regedit after
reading info in this forum, other forums, MS kb articles, and so
on. The first was an OE/Outlook conflict and the most recent was
the full removal of MSAS from the registry. It was an
interesting exercise. I thank everyone for their help. However,
where can one get the additional knowledge to satisfy your
statement, "The only thing needed to safely clean your registry
is knowledge and Regedit.exe." Is there a book or white paper
somewhere that covers this subject in more detail? Although I
have learned some things, I probably know enough to be dangerous
if I am not very careful. I would like some more organized
information if exists.

David

 

[david]

I put my post here to answer all of you. Thank you for your comments. I do
not use a cleaner but was interested in the answer that has been posted a
number of time about only needing knowledge but there is never any
suggestion on how to get that knowledge.

David

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi David - I won't post my usual diatribe against using Registry cleaners -
suffice it to say that I'm in general agreement with the other
anti-positions stated here. If you're going to experiment with your
Registry, then at least be aware of the following:

Get Erunt here for all NT-based computers including XP:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/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://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt, and for some
useful information about this subject

The following tutorials are useful:

Installing & Using ERUNT
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html

To see an illustrated registry restore procedure
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_erdntuse.html

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. See erunt.txt for
detailed instructions. Basically, if you make your backup into a folder
inside your Windows or Winnt folder, you can restore at a Recovery Console
boot by copying the files from that ERDNT folder into the system32\config
folder. After a good boot, then do another normal ERDNT restore to also
restore the user hives also.) (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.


(As an aside, there are, however, some third party Registry Editors which
can be of great help with both the incorrect uninstall problem 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 .)


--
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP



In

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

It's not as easy as reading a book. A lot of experimentation is needed!!

 

[david]

Jim, thanks for you input and the suggestion about ERUNT. I will get it
and use it. I have used Registrar Lite to help a friend with his
about.blank problem. I understand the general concern about using registry
cleaners without knowledge but I think that the general comment does not
help those of us who are not MS-MVPs. We read, try, make some mistakes,
make some correct "guesses," and fix some problems. If the answer is to not
use a cleaner, where do we get the knowledge to make a fix when something
goes wrong?

David

 

[Stan Brown]

However, where can one get the additional knowledge to satisfy your
statement, "The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe." Is there a book or white paper somewhere that covers this
subject in more detail? Although I have learned some things, I probably know
enough to be dangerous if I am not very careful. I would like some more
organized information if exists.

The best description of the Registry I have ever seen is Chapter 3
of WINDOWS XP ANNOYANCES FOR GEEKS, an O'Reilly paperback. ("For
Geeks" identifies the second edition, updated for SP2.)

You will also see in a recent thread I asked for some online
references for the specific keys and received some useful pointers.
But the O'Reilly book contains an excellent overview.

 

[david]

Thanks. I will look at it.

David

in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

The best description of the Registry I have ever seen is Chapter 3
of WINDOWS XP ANNOYANCES FOR GEEKS, an O'Reilly paperback. ("For
Geeks" identifies the second edition, updated for SP2.)

You will also see in a recent thread I asked for some online
references for the specific keys and received some useful pointers.
But the O'Reilly book contains an excellent overview.

 

[Seafarer]

Hi All,

Any recommendations for Registry Cleaners, preferably free.

Sim

Well I thought the same and did not use one until I tried a free trial
of RegSupreme.I've never heard of it so I thought I'd give it a try as
it has a backup.Up came over 500 invalid entries.I saw loads of
strings from programmes I had deleted weeks ago and also manually
deleted from the reg.
I deleted the lot after making sure I knew what they were and its
still working.I guess if it don't I'll reverse it with the backup or
system restore.I've got nothing to do with this programme and be wary
of trying any regcleaner.Leave XP to do it,I was just experimenting.