Registry Cleaner Tool

[Zilbandy]

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.

I also use a reg cleaner every so often, but I don't see speed
improvements. What is does for me is to make me feel better about just
cleaning up a little bit. I even periodically clean out the back seat
of my car and throw away all my old fast food lunch wrappers. It
doesn't improve the car's performance, but sometimes it just "smells"
better in the car.

 

[Big Al]

I also use a reg cleaner every so often, but I don't see speed
improvements. What is does for me is to make me feel better about just
cleaning up a little bit. I even periodically clean out the back seat
of my car and throw away all my old fast food lunch wrappers. It
doesn't improve the car's performance, but sometimes it just "smells"
better in the car.

What reader are you using. OT question.

 

[Daave]

What reader are you using. OT question.

X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 4.2/32.1118

 

[Big Al]

X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 4.2/32.1118

Should have added. I can't put smiley faces in my mail. Not that the
world is going to end next week because of this, but IM will, why not
these. At least people might see that I'm smiling and not trying to
bitch. Man! is it hard to convey levity in a typed message.
Thanks!!!

 

[Ken Blake, 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.?

I see that others have already answered your question, but I'll throw
my two cents in.

No, you won't see any improvement. That's the point I was making when
I said above that "cleaning of the registry isn't needed and is
dangerous." You take on a risk of problems for no benefit.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

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.

Yes, that's the insidious thing about registry cleaners. Most of the
time they *don't* cause problems. If they did, that would quickly
become widely known and all their sales would stop.

The point is that using a registry cleaner carries with it a risk of
problems. And since there is no benefit to what they do, you are
taking on additional risk in return for no benefit. A very bad
bargain.

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.

Yes, they can remove junk. But it's junk that doesn't hurt you.

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.

Your choice, of course, but in my view, that's a foolhardy attitude.
Sooner or later, you are very likely to get bitten.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

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 that the problem doesn't result on an unbootable computer, which
sometimes happens.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

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

How could it possibly know what entries are truly obsolete? Have you
told it what applications you're using now, and what applications you're
going to be installing and using in the future?

2) File or path inexistent.

Maybe. Or was it placed there to provide backwards compatibility with
an application?

3) Extensions not used.

And the makers of the registry cleaner know that you haven't
accidentally associated a file type with the wrong application, or that
you'll never be installing the pertinent application at some time in the
future?

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

None, whatsoever. (Oh, a subsequent registry scan might be a little
quicker, but that's of no real value.) That's why registry reamers are
called "snake oil:" Even when they do no harm, they do *nothing* to
positively affect (negative results abound) the performance of the
computer. At the very most, you'd free up a minuscule and statistically
insignificant amount of hard drive space.


--

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

 

[Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM]

Hello,

Please recommend an already tested Registry Cleaner Tool.

Thank You

Think your Registry needs "cleaning"? Read
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099 and draw your own conclusions.

 

[Humpty Dumpty]

How could it possibly know what entries are truly obsolete? Have you told
it what applications you're using now, and what applications you're going
to be installing and using in the future?




Maybe. Or was it placed there to provide backwards compatibility with an
application?




And the makers of the registry cleaner know that you haven't accidentally
associated a file type with the wrong application, or that you'll never be
installing the pertinent application at some time in the future?



None, whatsoever. (Oh, a subsequent registry scan might be a little
quicker, but that's of no real value.) That's why registry reamers are
called "snake oil:" Even when they do no harm, they do *nothing* to
positively affect (negative results abound) the performance of the
computer. At the very most, you'd free up a minuscule and statistically
insignificant amount of hard drive space.


--

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

OK, thank you all. This settles the point, for me. If so many well informed
people agree, there is no point in doing otherwise. I'm not going to buy
"intelligent design" when sound science does the job.
Humpty

 

[BoB]

SNIP


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.

This has been an interesting and informative thread on reg cleaners.

Win98 had a max limit on the size of the registry. When hitting that
limit, scandisk and defrag may stop working. Some software that added
several thousand reg entries could be uninstalled to drop below the max
but a re-install of Win98 was eminent. Even a reg cleaner could not save
you for very long. With XP's basically limitless registry, reg cleaners
lost their earlier, slight benefit.

My latest computer came with many pre-installed programs. Most were
useless to me as I have other preferences. As the unwanted programs were
uninstalled, hundreds of reg entries were left in the registry. These
were easily identified using three different reg cleaners just to take a
look- see. Since I'm experienced at removing specific items from the
registry, if I get bored some week I may remove them. Since they have no
impact on XP's registry, I'll have to be awfully bored.

I let my reg cleaners indicate their 'opinion' but I never actually
allow a reg cleaner to remove an entry from the registry.

My 2¢ on the subject.

BoB

 

[ANONYMOUS]

As others have just said, no registry cleaner is the best strategy to
keep your system in peak condition. However, if you really need
something then I suggest try this:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Hope this helps.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Or simply use Microsoft's own that runs in the online Live OneCare Safety
Scanner.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/products/computer/safetyscanner.mspx

 

[Root-dir]

I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean theregistry". 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. TheRegistryentries 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

through my own experince both CCleaner and Regseeker do a fair job at
protecting important things both are free and Regseeker has an
autoclean feature and command line switch so you can sechedual
cleanings it also has a full backup and restore feature and in anwser
to your question yes you might experince some speed enhancements then
again you might not alot of the stuff that it will speed up you wont
notice in everyday use stuff like the time it takes to load all the s#^
% on the uninstall programs menu you might notice a slight boost in
login times or boot speeds

all in all dont let these nuts scare you a registry cleaner is not
going to "hose" your system the one thing you have to look out for
though is just about ANY shareware cleaner stay AWAY if its got a
price tag its garbage and infact might actualy eat your system with
the exception of a select few enterprise programs and ones that come
as part of a utilities suite (norton system works anyone?) another
thing you want to look out for is the "Tweakers" if you do want to use
a tweaker other than microsoft's tweak ui utility then make a full
backup of your reg before you even install it and probly be a good
idea to make a system restore point.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM]

message




I just ran for an experiment RegSeeker "clean theregistry". 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. TheRegistryentries 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

through my own experince both CCleaner and Regseeker do a fair job at
protecting important things both are free and Regseeker has an
autoclean feature and command line switch so you can sechedual
cleanings it also has a full backup and restore feature and in anwser
to your question yes you might experince some speed enhancements then
again you might not alot of the stuff that it will speed up you wont
notice in everyday use stuff like the time it takes to load all the s#^
% on the uninstall programs menu you might notice a slight boost in
login times or boot speeds

all in all dont let these nuts scare you a registry cleaner is not
going to "hose" your system the one thing you have to look out for
though is just about ANY shareware cleaner stay AWAY if its got a
price tag its garbage and infact might actualy eat your system with
the exception of a select few enterprise programs and ones that come
as part of a utilities suite (norton system works anyone?) another
thing you want to look out for is the "Tweakers" if you do want to use
a tweaker other than microsoft's tweak ui utility then make a full
backup of your reg before you even install it and probly be a good
idea to make a system restore point.

Think your Registry needs "cleaning"? Read
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099 and draw your own conclusions.