Regseeker too aggressive?

[Jim Scott]

I quite like Regseeker as it seems to find stuff that other reg cleaners
don't.
However it labels some stuff green, which if you delete it affects programs
adversely; nothing serious yet, but I have lost sounds I have allocated to
some events.
Just a warning )

 

[Bill Turner]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

I quite like Regseeker as it seems to find stuff that other reg cleaners

don't.
However it labels some stuff green, which if you delete it affects
programs
adversely; nothing serious yet, but I have lost sounds I have allocated to
some events.
Just a warning )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Jim: Have you noticed any improvement using Regseeker? I used to use it
but never found any actual improvement in my computer so I stopped. Just
wonderng.

Bill T.

 

[Jim Scott]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Jim: Have you noticed any improvement using Regseeker? I used to use it
but never found any actual improvement in my computer so I stopped. Just
wonderng.

Bill T.

Hi Bill

To be perfectly honest I use several cleaners from time to time: Regseeker,
Regcleaner, TweakNow-Regcleaner, CCleaner and Easycleaner but never notice
a blind bit of difference after doing them.
I'm on XP SP2 with 512Mb on an Athlon 1700.
It might make a difference on an old machine.

One thing that annoys me is when I install say a skin to a program which is
not registered (in the registry) eg XMplay. Programs like Regseeker remove
it unless you are not careful. Similar deletions have occurred with
allocated .wav sounds.

I am sure that there must be good reason for these programs and I can see
the logic behind clearing 'left-behinds' and 'orphans', but which of these
does the best job without detailed observation......?
I *would* like to know the software that works as I describe and how often
to use it.

 

[Azzman]

Hi Bill

To be perfectly honest I use several cleaners from time to time:
Regseeker, Regcleaner, TweakNow-Regcleaner, CCleaner and Easycleaner
but never notice a blind bit of difference after doing them.
I'm on XP SP2 with 512Mb on an Athlon 1700.
It might make a difference on an old machine.

It does make a different on my p300 with 128 Mb RAM to clean out the
registry and junk files, but then again, it could be a placebo-effect.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys,

If you guys don't mind, I'd like to enter the conversation here.

I have used various Registry Cleaners since I first found a registry in
Windows on my 25 Mhz computer. I had a 170Mb hard drive with 24 MB of
RAM and Microsoft Office and PDF files hadn't been invented yet.

I have used various Registry Cleaners (both freeware and payware) since
that time to the present day. In all of that time, I can honestly say
that I have NEVER ONCE noticed any increase in performance on any
machine that had it Registry Cleaned---whether it was my machine, or a
client's, or a friend's, or a family member's computer.

I HAVE noticed dramatic increases in performance after I (or one of my
coworkers) have performed service on those machines, but none of those
increases in performance were directly caused by the singular act of
cleaning the registry.

Even so, I still have a couple of registry cleaners in my collection of
freeware. I use them maybe once or twice each year...if I remember to
do it...

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Jim - 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,
http://www.martau.com/ or free direct dwnld here:
http://digilander.libero.it/molearchive3/tun235.zip or here:
http://freeware4u.com/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=234, 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.answersthatwork.com/Downright_pages/downrights_registry.htm This
is intentionally the older 2.0 version - to see their most current stuff,
take a look here: http://www.resplendence.com/registrar.)

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.
)

 

[J.D.]

I quite like Regseeker as it seems to find stuff that other reg cleaners
don't.
However it labels some stuff green, which if you delete it affects programs
adversely; nothing serious yet, but I have lost sounds I have allocated to
some events.
Just a warning )

I have Regseeker and I use it, but CAREFULLY. It is one of the more agressive of
the ones I've tried. I use it to remove things that I know for sure are bad. I
don't use it as one of my automatic cleaners. I got a little careless with it a
few weeks ago and lost some of my file associations. I ended up restoring
everthing I deleted. For "automatic" cleaning I use RegscrubXP and the old
Regcleaner (predecessor to jv16 Powertools I think).