Registry Cleaners and Defaggers

[Bruce Chambers]

Are registry cleaners

No, not for the average computer user. 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 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 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 clean 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 their marketing department claims them 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.

.... and defraggers a good idea?

Periodically performing a disk clean-up and defragmentation using
WinXP's built-in tools can greatly help keep your PC performing at its
best. There's usually no need, however, for most people to bother
purchasing 3rd party defragmentation utilities. While some of these 3rd
party products do a better job than WinXP's built-in tool, the average
computer user simply doesn't need, and likely will not notice, the
differences.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Alias]

No, not for the average computer user. 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 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 multiple changes simultaneously.

Good registry cleaners don't do that. I can see it's been awhile since
you've used one. Being as you're rich, download SystemSuite 6
(www.v-com.com) and use the Registry Fixer feature under Fix and then
get back to us with a more intelligent post.

Alias

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Good registry cleaners .....

Hey, thanks. Another oxymoron for my collection... ;-}

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[kenchi]

The Registry uses layers of references and dependencies. Removing
a single entry may "Break" those associations. You can prove this by
running a Registry Cleaner repetitively. If it (Cleaner) was 100%
effective, a single pass would remove all "Dubious" content. Running
the cleaner again should yield a Zero detection count. This isn't how
most work. They function like pealing an onion. The 1st run peals off
missing or unresolved entries. Run the cleaner a 2nd time and it will
drill even further into entries and likely post another list of
"Errors".
As I've said before, the issue with Registry Cleaning is knowing when
to STOP.

Have used registry cleaner on some old systems a couple of times, hadno
issues. I defrag regularly, got one set to run in the background and its
running fine, i do notice a slight lag if i dont defrag when the drive
is fragmented, a much debated topic this is i guess.

 

[Vanguard]

Are registry cleaners and defraggers a good idea?

Only if they tell you what changes they intend to make BEFORE they make them
(i.e., they prompt you) AND you have the expertise to understand their
prompts (provided they are informative enough to understand). The only
function a registry cleaner should provide is to let you know that there is
something that could be corrected or deleted, like orphaned keys that
reference other non-existent keys (i.e., the chain of keys is broken) or the
target of a key no longer exists (i.e., InProcServer32 points to a file that
doesn't exist - provided you know that it will never exist since it may
under a different bootup scenario). If you don't know how to edit the
registry, you won't know what to answer for prompts from a registry cleaner.
A registry cleaner should only be considered a "tracker" that you hire to
find the prey and they YOU decide whether to pull the trigger or not, so
ultimately the effectiveness and results are determined by you. You are
also limited by the amount of "intelligence" that has been coded into the
registry cleaner, and that isn't much (but automating the little
intelligence they have does make it easier to find orphaned keys or broken
chains).

Registry defraggers are a waste of money and time. They only defrag the
*file* copy on the hard drive. The registry gets read into memory (so the
bigger the registry size the memory it consumes) and it is the memory copy
that gets used during operation. In memory, accessing keys at either end of
the registry database doesn't take anymore time than accessing the keys
right next to each other.

 

[Alias]

Hey, thanks. Another oxymoron for my collection... ;-}

Can't respond to content and can only make a wisecrack, eh? You,
obviously, don't know what you're talking about.

Alias

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Ryan - Well, you've already gotten some adverse opinions about Registry
Cleaning, and I'll add mine below. I do recommend regular use of a good
system defragger such as PerfectDisk which I recommend. As for Reg
Cleaners,

In my experience all of these Reg cleaners, even the best, are fraught with
danger. I advise against using them except in one specific instance, that
is when you have one that is capable of doing specific Reg searches, and you
NEED (not just WANT) to remove the remaining traces of something that didn't
get uninstalled correctly. (and you didn't have foresight enough to install
it using Total Uninstall, http://www.martau.com/tu.html or free direct
dwnld here: http://digilander.libero.it/molearchive3/tun235.zip or here:
http://freeware4u.com/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=234, in the
first place.) (As an aside, there are, however, some third party Registry
Editors which can be of great help with both the incorrect uninstall and
with certain malware problems, especially some of theCoolWebSearch types
such as the AppInit_DLLs variant of the about:blank version of CWS, for
example. I can recommend Registrar Lite, here:
http://www.resplendence.com/reglite .)

There are a couple of specific bugs that can cause abnormal growth in either
the System or Software hives; however, they are rare, and unless these hives
in %SystemRoot%\System32\config are very, very large (in the hundreds of
megabytes), then I would council you to leave your Registry alone except for
the special circumstances I mentioned above.

I and most other MVP's that I know believe that Registry modifications of
any type are probably best done manually, very carefully, with a thorough
knowledge of what's installed on your machine, and what you're doing, and
then only when necessary. There's very little (if any!) noticeable benefit
in either space saving or speed achievable by cleaning out the Registry
except in those few cases where there's a specific problem the client is
experiencing (usually uninstall or malware related in my experience) that
needs to be fixed.

Lastly, if you must screw around with your Registry, then at least get
Erunt/Erdnt, and run it before you do the Reg clean. You'll then have a
true restore available to you. Read below to see why you might not just
using the Reg cleaner's restore:

Get Erunt here for all NT-based computers including XP:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/index.htm I've set it up to
take a scheduled backup each night at 12:01AM on a weekly round-robin basis,
and a Monthly on the 1st of each month. See here for how to set that up:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt, and for some
useful information about this subject.

This program is one of the best things around - saved my butt on many
occasions, and will also run very nicely from a DOS prompt (in case you've
done something that won't let you boot any more and need to revert to a
previous Registry) IF you're FAT32 OR have a DOS startup disk with NTFS
write drivers in an NTFS system. (There is also a way using the Recovery
Console to get back to being "bootable" even without separate DOS write NTFS
drivers, after which you can do a "normal" Erdnt restore.) (BTW, it also
includes a Registry defragger program). Free, and very, very highly
recommended.

FYI, quoting from the above document:

"Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to make a
complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the whole registry
(for example, no information from the "SECURITY" hive is saved), nor can the
exported file be used later to replace the current registry with the old
one. Instead, if you re-import the file, it is merged with the current
registry, leaving you with an absolute mess of old and new registry keys.

FWIW, the second question I ask clients is whether they've recently used a
Reg Cleaner or tried to restore from one. (The first question I ask is
whether they've any non-commercial Norton/Symantec software installed.
)

 

[Mike Fields]

Hi Ryan - Well, you've already gotten some adverse opinions about Registry
Cleaning, and I'll add mine below. I do recommend regular use of a good
system defragger such as PerfectDisk which I recommend. As for Reg
Cleaners,

In my experience all of these Reg cleaners, even the best, are fraught with
danger. I advise against using them except in one specific instance, that
is when you have one that is capable of doing specific Reg searches, and you
NEED (not just WANT) to remove the remaining traces of something that didn't
get uninstalled correctly. (and you didn't have foresight enough to install
it using Total Uninstall, http://www.martau.com/tu.html :

For what it's worth, the link to Total Uninstall is now
http://www.martau.com/ (your link gives a page not found)

mikey

 

[Jim Byrd]

Thanks, Mike - I'll update that post.

 

[Jonny]

If you had not used the word "and" in the sentence, there would be a
different answer. Otherwise, the answer is no to your inquiry.

Let's look at it as two separate issues. Let's avoid confusion of readers
who don't understand grammatics and create urban legends in the process,
there's nothing wrong with defragmenting a filesystem on a regular basis.

The best registry cleaner is a XP clean install, as with prior MS OSes with
a registry. 3rd party registry cleaners may botch OS related items or 3rd
party applications during their cleaning process.

 

[Dragunov]

*Are registry cleaners and defraggers a good idea? *

Automatic registry cleaners aren't a good idea. I have tested a number
of these and found that I lose something like my GPEDIT or something
else.

Dragunov

 

[Guest]

... (and you didn't have foresight enough to install
it using Total Uninstall, http://www.martau.com/tu.html >

-
I'm unclear on how to install a program via Total Uninstall 3.51 when the
installation requires that I reboot my Windows XP Pro SP2 PC AND configure
the recently "installed" program, all as part of the first time installation?
The program I have recently installed is ZoneAlarm Pro 6.1.737.000.
Specifically, my questions are as follows:

1. Did Total Uninstall "follow" the installation through the reboot?

2. Did Total Uninstall "follow" the installation through the initial
configuration of ZoneAlarm Pro, a process that is automatically initiated by
the ZAP installation procedure immediately after rebooting my PC?

3. When do I "tell" Total Uninstall to take a Post Installation Snapshot,
before or after I finish the first round of configuration changes for ZAP?