Need a GOOD Registry Fixer

[-Nisko-]

I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results. I
also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have 963
entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm sure if I
search for other deleted programs, I will find the same useless junk.
Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to remove those 963
entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry to only reflect programs
which are currently restored. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results. I
also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have 963
entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm sure if I
search for other deleted programs, I will find the same useless junk.
Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to remove those 963
entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry to only reflect programs
which are currently restored. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

Your best bet is to leave the registry alone. The 963 entries
have no effect on your PC's performance at all and you will
see no improvement in speed after removing them. Why risk
the integrity of the registry if their is no gain?

 

[Alias]

I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results. I
also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have 963
entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm sure if I
search for other deleted programs, I will find the same useless junk.
Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to remove those 963
entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry to only reflect programs
which are currently restored. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

SystemSuite has an excellent registry fixer. It's not free, however. If
you're interested, go to http://www.v-com.com/

Alias

 

[Alias]

Your best bet is to leave the registry alone. The 963 entries
have no effect on your PC's performance at all and you will
see no improvement in speed after removing them. Why risk
the integrity of the registry if their is no gain?

I just installed Windows XP and SP2 and SystemSuite found over a
thousand useless registry entries. The difference in performance was
obvious after removing them.

Alias

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I just installed Windows XP and SP2 and SystemSuite found over a
thousand useless registry entries. The difference in performance was
obvious after removing them.

Alias

We have discussed performance issues on previous occasions
and in each case you tend to make qualitative statements without
backing them up with quantitative measurements that can be
repeated by other readers. Until you do so your response is
a matter of debate rather than a hard fact.

 

[Guest]

Hi Nisko:

I have no experience with System Suite but I can tell you that the
free/cheap registry "fixers" are worse than crap, they are downright
dangerous. If Alias experienced an increase in performance, it was because
of WHAT a particular deleted registry entry was doing, not HOW MANY entries
were abolished. The QUANTITY of obsolete entries residing in the registry
has no bearing on performance *IF* they are inert.

Are you having a specific problem with your PC? What is it?

Mark

 

[R. McCarty]

Removing disjointed Registry Keys could only affect performance
if it "Drilled/Resolved" items from the Service mappings where an
orphaned Service (such as Symantec/Norton) may be left behind.
But the risks involved far outweigh any potential benefits. Running
a Registry cleaner is like letting the neighborhood 13 year-old PC
guru loose to "Fix-Up" your PC for you.
Until Microsoft releases or advocates Registry cleaning for XP or
Vista - best to leave the Registry alone. For those that look on a
Registry cleaning as an itch they have to scratch - then at least do
a System Image before taking the leap-of-HKEY.

 

[Alias]

We have discussed performance issues on previous occasions
and in each case you tend to make qualitative statements without
backing them up with quantitative measurements that can be
repeated by other readers. Until you do so your response is
a matter of debate rather than a hard fact.

Boots quicker (ten seconds quicker) and the programs open quicker. Until
you use SystemSuite, you'll only be guessing, won't you, being as you
won't believe me? It was originally made by OnTrack.

Alias

 

[Kerry Brown]

SystemSuite has an excellent registry fixer. It's not free, however.
If you're interested, go to http://www.v-com.com/

Alias

I have one customer who also likes the v-com system suite. He is a very good
customer. I perform a clean install for him at least three or four times a
year. The usual reason for a clean install is because his registry is mixed
up.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results. I
also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have 963
entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm sure if I
search for other deleted programs, I will find the same useless junk.
Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to remove those 963
entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry to only reflect programs
which are currently restored. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

Why would you think you need to clean your registry?

What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt will 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. 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.

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 maintain 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.



--

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

 

[Pennywise]

|>I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results. I
|>also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have 963
|>entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm sure if I
|>search for other deleted programs, I will find the same useless junk.
|>Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to remove those 963
|>entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry to only reflect programs
|>which are currently restored. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

I use NTREGOPT, does it work? I'm not really sure, as it gives no
output other than many thousands of entries have been optimized..

But no problems and I also use ERUNT instead of Restore and it works
very well.
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

 

[R. McCarty]

NTRegOpt is a Registry compression utility. All it does is compact
the "WhiteSpace" within the Registry Hives to make the overall size
of Registry smaller.

 

[-Nisko-]

Thank you all for your advice. The one thing I should add is the reason I
want to clean up my Registry: I have used Photoshop (different versions)
for years. I have been trying to install the latest version and it won't
work properly on my PC (but it works fine on my wife's PC). So, I am
ASSUMING that all those Photoshop entries (963) might be confusing the new
installation. Nothing else I have tried has worked - so, cleaning the
Registry of all Photoshop entries is my only recourse (except for
reformatting my drive and starting all over again).

 

[Alias]

I have one customer who also likes the v-com system suite. He is a very good
customer. I perform a clean install for him at least three or four times a
year. The usual reason for a clean install is because his registry is mixed
up.

I have used SystemSuite since 2001 with no problems running Me, 2000 and
now XP. SystemSuite has two fixers, one automatic and the other manual.
Which one was your customer using?

Alias

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Thank you all for your advice. The one thing I should add is the reason I
want to clean up my Registry: I have used Photoshop (different versions)
for years. I have been trying to install the latest version and it won't
work properly on my PC (but it works fine on my wife's PC). So, I am
ASSUMING that all those Photoshop entries (963) might be confusing the new
installation. Nothing else I have tried has worked - so, cleaning the
Registry of all Photoshop entries is my only recourse (except for
reformatting my drive and starting all over again).

In that case, use something basic like CCleaner
(http://www.ccleaner.com/) to identify and remove *only* those entries
that refer to PhotoShop. Don't give CCleaner (or any other registry
editor) free rein to delete or modify anything automatically. And *DO*
have CCleaner make a backup _before_ committing to any changes.


--

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

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have several Registry fixers - but they all give different results.
I also have a Registry editor which shows, with a search, that I have
963 entries relating to a program which has long been deleted. I'm
sure if I search for other deleted programs, I will find the same
useless junk. Unfortunately, the Registry Editor doesn't allow me to
remove those 963 entries en masse. I want to pare down my registry
to only reflect programs which are currently restored. Please give
me some suggestions. Thank you.

This often-repeated question always brings strong opinions on both sides of
the issue. Here's my advice: do not use a registry cleaner. The registry
doesn't need to be cleaned. Extra registry entries don't hurt you. The risk
of a registry cleaner hurting you (deleting an entry you need) isn't
necessarily enormous, but it's much greater than any potential benefit it
may have.

 

[Guest]

I call BS!!!

I had a guys Windows registry scanned with system mechanic and found over
4,000 registry errors.

they guy came to me as the pc was about unusable. the registry was so bad
he couldnt log in and needed to reboot 20 times before he could log in.

scanned pc fixed errors and now the system was stable enough to format and
install Windows XP.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I have used SystemSuite since 2001 with no problems running Me, 2000
and now XP. SystemSuite has two fixers, one automatic and the other
manual. Which one was your customer using?

Alias

He used the automatic fixer. I think I have finally talked him into not
using a registry cleaner. He hasn't had any problems since.

 

[Guest]

Glad to hear that came out ok but, based on my experience, I personally think
you were lucky. I would LOVE to see a registry cleaner that was somehow
"foolproof". Alias claims to have found one but I am quite sceptical-- again
this is based on my own, limited, experience.
\

Mark

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi Nisko,

Automatic registry cleaners can cause more problems then they fix.

The best advise is to manually remove the registry entries placed by PS
after uninstalling it.
RegSeekers "Find in registry..." feature is a good tool for doing so.

But first, backup the registry. Erunt is a good tool for doing so.
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

More information on how to backup the Windows XP Registry:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/registry.htm

Export and import within Regedit is *not* a good method of backing up
the entire registry. Its value is where you are going to modify a small
section - export that section, then if needed delete it and re-import to
put things back.
First the backups are text mode, largely in Unicode and are enormous.
Second there is no proper way to restore it. Import does not replace
the current registry but merges the file into it causing the registry to
be come severely bloated. Thus unwanted additions made since the export
are not removed - which is very often what you want to do.
And third when you want to use it may not be practicable, particularly
if the system will not boot.
System restore is the built in method of restoring the registry.

How do I Test System Restore’s functionality?
Create a new restore point named TEST.
Create a new shortcut on the desktop and point it to My Computer or any
other file of your choice and name it TEST.
Now restore to the Test restore point.
The system will now reboot, and you will receive a message if the
restore was successful, and the Test shortcut on the desktop will be
gone.