Registry Cleaner

[Peter in New Zealand]

New Zealand -- wow, what a spectacularly beautiful country -- some of the best
scenery in the whole world.

Blue and Gold are the colours of the California Golden Bears of the University
of California, Berkeley. Yes, THAT Berkeley.

I'm not much into sports -- would rather count the number of Nobel laureates on
the faculty -- but Cal has NCAA champion water polo teams and last year we went
to one of the bowl games (can't recall which however).

Must tell my 18 year old son that - he thinks Otago colours are
copyright or something - chuckle! Yep, it's a beautiful place all right,
with 10 degree (Celcius) frosts and snow all over the mountains at the
moment. Anyway, thank you for your contributions to this thread, and
your kind comments re NZ.

 

[Guest]

Can I just pop in here and confirm something please from those who know
much more than me? I have Vista Home Premium clean installed on my
desktop. Used to run XP Pro on the same machine. I would regularly use a
freeby called Regscrubber on XP, and it almost always threw up a list of
errors, dead entries etc, which it would deal with smartly. In all the
years I used it I never had a single reg problem. (well, not that I knew
of anyway <smile>) I never saw any improvement in performance after
using it either, but it "felt good" if you know what I mean.

Then I upgraded to Vista Home prem and was unsure about Regscrubber. I
gor a utility called Registry Mechanic (on a freeby offer) and have been
using it about once a week. I've had lots of programs on and off the
machine, finding out which are usable with Vista and which are not. Reg
Mech always comes up with a list of things to clean up, and I let it do
that. So far I have had no issues, but I am concerned at reading the
previous posts in this thread. Maybe Vista's own built in
"idiot-proofing" is protecting it from this "idiot". Appreciate any
comments.

OK, i'm going to be the dissenting voice among the experts (of which i
am definitely NOT)

However, i've found a great program that will allow you to scan the
registry - top to bottom - to find left behind files from uninstalled
programs. It is called 'Registrar Lite'

For instance, if you uninstall Nero - after a reboot run 'Registrar
Lite' Under the search tab there is one option 'Check registry'. You
would type in both 'Nero' and 'Ahead' and it will show the left overs.
Mind you, you MUST use extreme caution when using registry cleaners as
has been mentioned but it does a fantastic job of cleaning out the junk
left over.

I'm one who generally shies away from such programs but have used it
with great success and highly recommend it.


HTH,


Ray

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

OK, i'm going to be the dissenting voice among the experts (of which i
am definitely NOT)

However, i've found a great program that will allow you to scan the
registry - top to bottom - to find left behind files from uninstalled
programs. It is called 'Registrar Lite'

For instance, if you uninstall Nero - after a reboot run 'Registrar
Lite' Under the search tab there is one option 'Check registry'. You
would type in both 'Nero' and 'Ahead' and it will show the left overs.
Mind you, you MUST use extreme caution when using registry cleaners as
has been mentioned but it does a fantastic job of cleaning out the junk
left over.

Maybe so, but the point, which I've made here before, is that the
"junk left over" doesn't hurt you in any way. There are clearly some
registry cleaners that are safer than others, but they *all* have some
risk attached to their use. It's foolhardy to run any risk at all for
no benefit.

 

[Richard]

A decent cleaner is useful but should only be used when needed. A decent
cleaner will backup the registry so that you can restore the registry if the
cleaning operation removed something it should have left alone.

But an install that has gone bad, and someone is in need of using the system
and would rather try something other than a clean reinstall many find that a
cleaning of the registry may get the system back into proper operation. This
should be followed by a full spy and virus sweep of the system. I have been
there and have done that.

Richard

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

A decent cleaner is useful but should only be used when needed. A decent
cleaner will backup the registry so that you can restore the registry if the
cleaning operation removed something it should have left alone.

However, depending on what it removed that it shouldn't have, the
result of using the registry cleaner can be an unbootable system. If
that happens, your backup is useless.

I repeat, it's a bad bargain. Routine cleaning of the registry isn't
needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any
registry cleaner.

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.

 

[Rock]

A decent cleaner is useful but should only be used when needed. A decent
cleaner will backup the registry so that you can restore the registry if
the cleaning operation removed something it should have left alone.

But an install that has gone bad, and someone is in need of using the
system and would rather try something other than a clean reinstall many
find that a cleaning of the registry may get the system back into proper
operation. This should be followed by a full spy and virus sweep of the
system. I have been there and have done that.

I don't see where one can say as a general rule it is useful. Unused /
orphaned entries don't cause problems. So where is the is the benefit
versus the risk that it will render the system not bootable?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

A decent cleaner is useful but should only be used when needed.

And only by a trained, experienced professional as a time-saving
diagnostic tool. Never by the average home user.

A decent
cleaner will backup the registry so that you can restore the registry if the
cleaning operation removed something it should have left alone.

But that backup never occurs automatically, and is useless when the
so-called "cleaner" has rendered the computer completely unbootable,
which is not a very rare occurrence.





--

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

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

 

[Guest]

ccleaner

free and great...but...be careful when you "touch" the registry....