ccleaner.com is pretty good, as is diskeeper.com IIRC
http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=77316,00.asp
http://www.ccleaner.com/download
They ask for donations, which is fine, but it is downloadable for free.
This is a bad place to ask about registry cleaners; there is a closed
minded faction here whose ultimate intent is to libel and slander every
registry cleaner on the market under the guise that NONE are any good
and will cause irreversible problems. Pegasus is not one of those, but
.... I still feel inclined to right his misinformation.
Always be sure what you choose has no ads and can put "fixes" back if it
turns out something untoward happens.
Also, is there any free software that is
See above.
I Goggled this and there were various that seemed good
That's the problem for newbies; separating the chaff from the good
fruit. Try a search for
"registry cleaner" +review
exactly as typed and there is a fair likelihood someone you respect has
done a review of them. It's a list of possibilities at least.
Here's a reasonable, not great, description of what they do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registry_cleaner
There are many phonies out there and malware ridden applications for
registry cleaners, just as there are for disk defragmenters, editors,
and everything else. The OP is wise to be checking first.
However, this post is a long boilerplate that ignores the question that
was asked by the OP and was uncalled for.
This is probably the start of another thread that ranges far and wide
due to the strong opinions that people hold about registry cleaners.
Here is my own opinion:
1. Residual registry entries left behind by not-so-thorough
unistall programs do not slow down your machine, same
as files in the temp folder of your disk don't slow it down.
Ah, but some can and have done so indeed. You should never say never.
I've seen it enough times to know it's possible. As for the temp
folder/s, leftovers in there can sometimes create some pretty nasty and
hard to chase down problems that are often fixed by deleting them. Even
worms and trojans can operate from the temp folders. It's always a good
idea to keep them trimmed up. "Temp" isn't the only folder these things
can reside in either.
2. Most registry cleaners are either completely useless or even
harmful.
OK, although how you count "most" can be debated, which I'm not inclined
to do. BUT this isn't what the OP asked. He asked for just the
opposite, in fact. I've noticed an interesting phonomina in the
searches lately on Google: so far, every anti-registry cleaner I have
clicked on to see what they had to say, was a 404 Not Found. No idea
what it really means, but it's interesting if nothing else.
Ccleaner is one such that is often mentioned here as being used.
Cleaning the registry after the removal of a few programs will often
not show any improvements, but that isn't what the OP asked. He asked:
Actually, except for his title, he may not actually mean "registry
clean" as a program that does cleaning of the registry , but more in the
area of step by step instructions to guide him through a learning
process about how to maintain the registry.
3. To "substantiate" their worth, most registry cleaners will report
dozens or hundreds of registry entries that they would remove.
This impresses potential buyers but has no benefit - see Point 1
above.
How do you know there is no benefit? Citations? Referrals? Links? Do
you have any current empirical data even, to show that's the case at
least on your own machine/s? The amount of supporting data for these
things is interesting in light of how much information IS available.
4. I have never seen an authoritative report that proves the benefit
of a registry cleaner.
And I've never seen an "authoritative " report to back up what you say
either. "authoritative " being the main vagueness there and depending
on how you mean it. I have however, seen several sources of "accurate"
descriptions of their benefits, and verified them, and gained the
experience needed to be able to tell whether an app is good or not based
on a little simple research.
This is more a problem you have more than it is the usefulness of not
of any particular application, let alone classifying an entire industry
as useless, although your stance is more sensible than a couple others
around here.
5. People who have used registry cleaners frequently report that
their machines run faster. Invariably their assessment is based on
a gut feeling rather than on a repeatable test with a stop watch.
That may be; certainly isn't impossible. By running my registry
maintenance program (aka "cleaner") on a machine just last Thursday I
got a stopwatch- measured decrease in boot time of 40 seconds (boot =
end of POST to initiation of background programs for the System Tray
since it's such a huge variable). In the end the machine was completely
functional in 3:02 including System Tray population. I suspect you know
what it was it removed. And, it stopped the single boot-time error,
didn't crash anything I could find, and as of around noon today, that
user was still quite happy with his machine.
When people need HELP, that's what responses should be about; HELP. Not
telling them they don't know enough, should get someone else when there
isn't any real need of that (yet), and certainly they deserve to hear
more than why they are wrong in what they want, as with this OP. I'm
not even certain what he wanted was an actual "regitry cleaner". A few
simple responses, properly indicating your opinion of a few things would
have sufficed and left him to be able to go on to other posts that
address his questions.
Regards,
Twayne
Once more, I refer