Registry cleaner recommendation?

[John John - MVP]

Think of the registry as a file cabinet with folders for the electric
company, and other important areas.

You decide to go green and build a mini-wind turbine and you ask Joe-
Bob to shred the contents of the electric company folder.

He gets most of it, but leaves a few bills in the folder.

You probably get the picture.

Have a good one,
Andy

A more apt analogy would be to think of the registry as an electrical
panel and to think of the registry cleaner as a dim-witted electrician
who turns off the the breaker to the plugs in the guest bedroom because
nothing is plugged in any of the plugs and nothing has been plugged in
for the last year or more. The second time the dim-witted electrician
comes by he sees the breaker that is turned off and decides that it is
not needed so he yanks it out and throws it in the garbage can...

Registry cleaners are next to utterly useless and tend to cause more
harm than good. Anyone who wants to keep their Windows installation in
good working order would do well to refrain from running useless
programs on their machines.

John

 

[Kraut / Larry S.]

Registry cleaners are next to utterly useless and tend to cause more
harm than good. Anyone who wants to keep their Windows installation in
good working order would do well to refrain from running useless
programs on their machines.

John

Well I tell you what - that is a matter of opinion - to which everyone
is entitled.

The original poster asked for reg cleaner recommendations - not
whether you liked them or not so why reply if you can not answer what
he asked?!?!? No wonder MS dumped news groups what with "MVPs" like
you!!!

 

[choro]

Sir, you are wrong. The MVP is entitled to his opinion to NOT recommend the
installation of ANY registry cleaners.

Personally, I can say that I have used Registry Patrol and was happy with it
but I can't say that it works like magic. It does a good job of cleaning the
registry and also backs up the old registry in case of any sudden need to go
back which only proves that registry cleaners can also sometimes ADVERSELY
affect the registry.

Though I agree with your advice of not installing and uninstalling
especially rubbishy programs on your computer.

Keep it simple is the best policy in real life and it also applies to
computers.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Personally, I can say that I have used Registry Patrol and was happy with it
but I can't say that it works like magic. It does a good job of cleaning the
registry and also backs up the old registry in case of any sudden need to go
back

Bear in mind that if the result of using a registry cleaner is an
unbootable computer (which unfortunately happens fairly frequently)
that backup won't be of much use to you.

Yes it's better to have a backup than not to have one, but don't think
it provides you with complete protection.

 

[mm]

Wow, what should I make of this?

I tried to compare the registry checking results of AVG Free and of
CCleaner.

It wan't easy because their categories have little similarity.

But in the process, in CCcleaner, at the end, I found three items
labeled Missing Startup Softeware.

Two of them were Verizon programs, and she and I both use Verizon DSL.

This was a stupid line on my part. I have verizon DSL like she does,
but I have no verizon programs in my start-up list. Never have had.

Maybe she doesn't need hers either.

But that doesn't make them mistakes. CCleaner said quote "Missing
Startup Software"

And AVG Free 11 just said quote "startup", but it was in the list of
"Registry Errors".

But all three files named, two of them Verizon, exist.

These are just three that I found that make no sense, and look like if
removed would cause lots of trouble. I havent' checked out any
others.

 

[mm]

This was a stupid line on my part. I have verizon DSL like she does,
but I have no verizon programs in my start-up list. Never have had.

Maybe she doesn't need hers either.

But that doesn't make them mistakes. CCleaner said quote "Missing
Startup Software"

And AVG Free 11 just said quote "startup", but it was in the list of
"Registry Errors".

But all three files named, two of them Verizon, exist.

These are just three that I found that make no sense, and look like if
removed would cause lots of trouble. I havent' checked out any
others.

BTW, it probably has to do with when she, iirc, had to use special
verizon software to solve her verizon problem, while she talked to
them on the phone. mcci..tray.exe and verizonservicpoint.exe

I'm tired of working on her computer so I left them.

 

[SC Tom]

Sir, you are wrong. The MVP is entitled to his opinion to NOT recommend
the installation of ANY registry cleaners.

Personally, I can say that I have used Registry Patrol and was happy with
it but I can't say that it works like magic. It does a good job of
cleaning the registry and also backs up the old registry in case of any
sudden need to go back which only proves that registry cleaners can also
sometimes ADVERSELY affect the registry.

If you read the post I made of some of the experiences I had with CCleaner,
you'll see that those backups don't always work. If you don't have a viable
image or back up of your system drive, you're asking for trouble if you're
depending on that registry back up to save your bacon.

 

[Tester]

If you read the post I made of some of the experiences I had with
CCleaner, you'll see that those backups don't always work. If you don't
have a viable image or back up of your system drive, you're asking for
trouble if you're depending on that registry back up to save your bacon.

Have you had any experience that Ccleaner deleted a particular registry
entry resulting in your system become unstable and un-bootable?

Please advise us this *SPECIFIC* fact.

 

[tango]

Buy a Mac or use Linux. No registry. Much simpler, more stable.

Ted


"mm" wrote in message
Can you recommend a good registry cleaner for XP.

I used to have one that took every registry entry in turn that
referred to a file and looked for that file. That's the kind of
process I would like to do.

Regcleaner is very famous, but I can't figure out how to do that with
it. If not, some other program would be fine.

Also an you tell me if Regcleaner by Jouni Vuorio lets you look at the
entries before it removes them, even if you have specified a program.
I'm sure it does, but the readme file doesn't say.

Thanks a lot, MM

Background:
Normally I don't run any registry cleaner, because of the
discouragement I get here and other newsgroups.

But this time, I have netbook that I just devirusied for a friend and
a) AVG Free 11 says it has almost 500 bad registry entries. It
doesn't provide for removing them (probalby want you to buy
something). It does display the location, although not the key or
value. That's not enough for me to know if it is bad or not.

b) this it the last maintenance it will get for a long time. The owner
doesn't do anything but use it.

c) I figure some of the entries may well be for viruses I deleted,
OTOH, what difference does it make if I deleted them. If she gets a
new virus, it will make its own entry in the registry.

 

[SC Tom]

Have you had any experience that Ccleaner deleted a particular registry
entry resulting in your system become unstable and un-bootable?

Please advise us this *SPECIFIC* fact.

Read the example I gave in my reply to kerneldebugger of what happened to
me. It didn't make the system unbootable, but when a number of apps no
longer work correctly, then the system is unstable. Is that *SPECIFIC*
enough, your honor?