Registry Cleaner Tool

[David]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

Why do you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry? What
specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some program's
bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can 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. After
all, why use a chainsaw 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
wide-spread multiple changes simultaneously. The only thing needed to
safely clean your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.

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 repeatedly 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. 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.

More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
automated registry "cleaner," particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good, whatsoever. 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. Given the potential for harm, it's just not
worth the risk.

Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's no
real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
non-existent benefits.

I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to make
any changes automatically. But I really don't think that there are any
registry "cleaners" that are truly safe for the general public to use.
Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools simply are not safe
in the hands of the inexperienced user.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

 

[Ron Badour]

The other posters' comments mirror my own thoughts on the matter. One thing
that hasn't been said is that the reg cleaners have undo files to reverse
any changes made. That's fine providing a problem caused by the cleaner
shows up immediately and you think to use the undo file. However, suppose
the problem doesn't show up for two weeks because you haven't used a
particular program. Do you think that you will even remember running the
reg cleaner two weeks earlier and think to use the undo file?

Just too much risk using these programs with very little documented benefit.

 

[Bill in Co.]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

The best one is none (seriously).

Unless you understand the registry well enough to be able to capably use
regedit, and then only by knowing exactly what you are looking for.
Otherwise, it is best to observe the Keep Out signs posted there.

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

To answer your question as simply as possible try 'TrashReg'. No bells and
whistles but seems to be effective at what it is designed to do.

Whether you need to 'clean' the Registry of redundant entries is another
subject and has been addressed and debated extensively.

 

[VanguardLH]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

Do you have a backup & restore plan in place? When (and not if) the
registry cleaner corrupts your registry and when you can no longer boot
into Windows, just how are you going to restore that OS partition so it
is usable again? Even if you use a registry cleaner that provides for
backups of its changes so you can revert back to the prior state, how
are you going to perform that restore if you cannot boot the OS after
hosing over its registry? What about entries in the registry that look
to be orphaned under the current OS load instance but are used under a
different OS environment? You delete what looks orphaned only to find
out that they are required under a different environment.

Say there was an unusually high amount of orphaned entries in your
registry, like 4MB. By deleting it, you would speed up how long it
takes Windows to load the registry's files when it starts up - by all of
maybe 1 second. Oooh, aaah. All that risk of modifying the registry to
save maybe a second, or less, during the Windows startup. Most folks
that clean the registry end up deleting only 10KB, or less. They are
doing nothing to improve their Windows load time. Since the registry is
only read from the memory copy of it, and since memory is random access,
there is no difference to read one byte of the registry (in memory) from
the another byte in the registry (in memory). The extra data in memory
for orphaned entries has no effect on the time to retrieve items from
the memory copy of the registry.

Cleaning the registry will NOT improve performance in reading from the
memory copy of the registry. The reduced size of the registry's .dat
files might reduce the load time of Windows by all of a second and
probably much less. And you want to risk the stability of your OS for
inconsequential changes to its registry. The same boobs that get
suckered into these registry cleanup "tools" are the same ones that get
suckered into the memory defragment "tools".

A registry cleaner should only be used if you yourself can correctly
cleanup the registry. The cleaner is just a tool to automate the same
process but you should know every change that it intends to make and
understand each of those changes. After all, and regardless of the
stagnant expertise coded into the utility, *YOU* are the final authority
in what registry changes are performed whether you do it manually or
with a utility.

 

[Big Al]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

Still if you "have to have one", then I like Tune Up Utilities 2008.
It comes with one, but it has cleaners to delete old temp files, and
many more utilities. And as some have suggested, the reg cleaner
allows for selective exceptions to the automated clean, and a back. Not
that I've used the backup, but it does work. I find it nice to run
when I delete a program and it leaves entries. I usually isolate those
entries and forget the others. Like others have said, I don't know
why they are there, I just know I deleted program xyz, thus any
reference to xyz I know I should delete. I write it up to a poor
uninstall program. It has a defrag for the registry, but I'd stay away
from that too.

And I'll re-iterate, if you don't have a good solid backup routine, nix
this whole idea. If Microsoft wanted the user to 'clean' his
registry, you think there might have been one on the menu?

 

[Ron Badour]

this whole idea. If Microsoft wanted the user to 'clean' his registry,

you think there might have been one on the menu?

In fact, MS had a registry cleaner back in the W98 days called RegClean. It
was as destructive as any of the other cleaner products I've seen. MS
finally scrapped it.

 

[David]

To answer your question as simply as possible try 'TrashReg'. No bells and
whistles but seems to be effective at what it is designed to do.

Thank you for your suggestion. Looks good.

 

[David]

Still if you "have to have one", then I like Tune Up Utilities 2008.

Thanks Big Al. I already know this one but appreciate it anyway.

 

[David]

In fact, MS had a registry cleaner back in the W98 days called RegClean. It
was as destructive as any of the other cleaner products I've seen. MS
finally scrapped it.

Ron, as far as I remember there were also a variation of RegClean that
was much better.

 

[Unknown]

What is it designed to do?

To answer your question as simply as possible try 'TrashReg'. No bells
and whistles but seems to be effective at what it is designed to do.

Whether you need to 'clean' the Registry of redundant entries is another
subject and has been addressed and debated extensively.

 

[Unknown]

You were very lucky.

Some folk seem to think a reg cleaner is totally unnecessary, while
others appear to imply that they WILL, sooner or later, screw up the
registry. Just like to say I have used reg cleaners extensively since W95
and the original Regclean. I used Regscrubber all through W2000 and XP,
and now use CCleaner with its reg cleaning function on Vista. Over all
those years, and probably many hundreds of registry cleans, I have never
observed an improvement in performance I could definately attribute to
cleaning the registry. But I have never had a registry cleaner cause me
any identifiable problems either.

In the end YMMV, but it seems to me that either extreme view is perhaps a
little - well, extreme. However, I respectfully recognise the far greater
experience of many in this newsgroup. I just wanted to offer my own
experience, which does seem at odds a little with the more extreme views I
have seen expressed here.

 

[Humpty Dumpty]

Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.

I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean the registry". It found 569
unnecessary entries. According to your advise, I left them alone.
But I looked at the findings, and found them sensible. They are of three
types:
1) Obselete entries
2) File or path inexistent.
3) Extensions not used.
The findings are true. The Registry entries really point to garbage. And
here comes my question:

Supposing I am wise enough to delete only entries which I fully understand
and I do not do any harm to the OS, will there be any benefit, such as
greater speed, faster loading or shutting down, etc.?
TIA
Humpty

 

[HeyBub]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

I have recorded your IP address (200.121.224.151).

When you come back here lamenting that a registry cleaner has hosed your
system, you will be taunted a second time.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean the registry". It found 569
unnecessary entries. According to your advise, I left them alone.
But I looked at the findings, and found them sensible. They are of three
types:
1) Obselete entries
2) File or path inexistent.
3) Extensions not used.
The findings are true. The Registry entries really point to garbage. And
here comes my question:

Supposing I am wise enough to delete only entries which I fully understand
and I do not do any harm to the OS, will there be any benefit, such as
greater speed, faster loading or shutting down, etc.?
TIA
Humpty

No, there won't be any benefit at all. Your PC won't run any faster
if you delete various unused files from your disk and it will not speed
up if you remove obsolete entries or unused extensions. Registry
cleaners report these items for one single reason: to impress users.
It improves their sales figures (but not your PC speed).

 

[Daave]

I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean the registry". It found
569 unnecessary entries. According to your advise, I left them alone.
But I looked at the findings, and found them sensible. They are of
three types:
1) Obselete entries
2) File or path inexistent.
3) Extensions not used.
The findings are true. The Registry entries really point to garbage.
And here comes my question:

Supposing I am wise enough to delete only entries which I fully
understand and I do not do any harm to the OS, will there be any
benefit, such as greater speed, faster loading or shutting down, etc.?

There is no evidence that performance improves appreciably if leftover
registry entries are deleted. But if you are very curious to conduct
your own experiments, be sure to image your hard drive first so that in
the unlikely (yet possible) event that you ruin your system, you will be
able to restore it (running ERUNT is another option). And be sure to
post back with results! (Use a stopwatch; post back with hard figures!)

 

[Doug W.]

I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean the registry".
It found 569 unnecessary entries. According to your advise, I
left them alone.
But I looked at the findings, and found them sensible. They
are of three types:
1) Obselete entries
2) File or path inexistent.
3) Extensions not used.
The findings are true. The Registry entries really point to
garbage. And here comes my question:

Supposing I am wise enough to delete only entries which I
fully understand and I do not do any harm to the OS, will
there be any benefit, such as greater speed, faster loading or
shutting down, etc.?
TIA
Humpty

Humpty: I would say that most of the MVPs are of the same
opinion and see no advantage in REG Cleaners.

I have used selected Reg Cleaners for over twenty years and have
had no bad experiences but perhaps I was lucky. I find that some
of them will remove remnants of programs that the uninstall pgms
designed for them fail to do, and sometimes loads of junk.

Whether there is an advantage in removing this dross or not, the
MVPs say NO, so I have to believe them. I just hate junk I guess
so occasionally will houseclean...but that's just me.

If you feel confident in your ability to judge what is good or
bad to remove, it is only for you to decide. If you screw up,
there are undoubtedly some MVPs ready to come to your assistance
albeit reluctantly.
-
Doug W.
-

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The registry is a database. Nothing more would happen from deleting these
entries than deleting old addresses from a contact list. A lot of these
entries were used one-time by such things as installers.