Do older REGCLEAN programs work with Windows XP?

[Sam]

I'm just wondering if Microsoft Reglean 4.1 and the software program known
as RegCleaner are OK to use with Windows XP. They seemed to work great with
Windows 98SE. Should they be used at all? Does Windows XP have some
automatic way of cleaning itself up?

Sam

 

[Phil \(a.k.a. purplehaz\)]

No do not use Regclean. XP's registry is different than it used to be.
RegCleaner (from jv16.org website) works fine with xp.

 

[Kodar]

I would not recommend using RegClean, I would suggest
going to either Download.com or ZDnet and reading through
the reviews of other people using the Registry Cleaners
and see what they have to say. Just my .02

 

[E McCann]

No - the registry structure of Win9x and the NT family (including XP) are
far different.

 

[Hilary Karp]

There are two freeware programs I use that work well with XP:

RegCleaner 4.3
RegScrubxP v3.25

The RegScrubXP is no longer supported by the writer but you can still
find it on various sites for download

 

[Mark Ascroft]

JV 16 Power Tools seems to work well.

There are two freeware programs I use that work well with XP:

RegCleaner 4.3
RegScrubxP v3.25

The RegScrubXP is no longer supported by the writer but you can still
find it on various sites for download

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Sam - 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.geocities.com/ggmartau/projects/projects.html, in the first
place.)

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://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/index.htm 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.

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.


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



In