Registry Cleaners.

[Twayne]

<lol> Millions of people use crack. What does that prove?

Well, it tries to "prove" That millions of people get high. But it
means more than the closed minded spidiots spewing the snake oil myths.
Not very good at analogies, are you?

 

[Twayne]

"You" and "can" being the operative words there. They say nothing about
such programs being bad OR good. Which comes out as a "So?"

....>

No - it's known as 'injecting a serious amount of caution'!
using a Registry Cleaner is fine - if you know the effect that each
edit that you're doing is going to have. If you are the 'average,
home' user, then the chances are that you have no real idea what each
edit is going to do - or where the original entry came from.
The consequence is that the majority of users will click on the
'remove all' option - and their system will proceed to have problems.
I've seen this symptom too many times to count!!

OK, so even if I DID agree with that wholly, which I do not because it
isn't seeing the forest for the trees, what then is the suggestion for
the user? What should he do instead? What are the open options? Edit
by hand I suppose? Ignore it? What? And why?

Registry Cleaners are very goo at what their writers designed them to
do - find minor inconsistencies in the registry.

Wrong. Registry cleaners are definitely NOT desinged to find "minor
inconsistencies" in the registry. That statement alone shows your lack
of understanding of what the registry even is, how it is used, and how
it can be analyzed.

They are VERY bad at informing the user of the effects of making any
of the changes that they recommend (and the risks thereof) -

Who is "they"? And besides, making an assumption for "they":
Not true at all. Two of my 3 favorites do an excellent job of that, and
the remaining one makes you click on links so you can always get the
latest information they have.

and even

worse at understand the 'contingency entries' that many programs put
into the registry (take for instance versions of Office, which insert
entries which may become active if the version of Office is upgraded,
or if certain add-ons are installed)

"Contingency entries", eh? I think you've been discovering too many
buzzwords and not bothering to figure out what they actually mean. If
you refute that, then kindly:
-- Indicate an office contingency entry that would cause a cleaner
problems.
-- Indicate any office add-on installation/contingency/anything that
would cause a cleaner problems.
-- And finally, even if it were to happen (and I happen to KNOW how to
fool a cleaner, BTW), why isn't it a simply matter of undoing the
entry/ies?

Overall, for the novice user - or anyone short of an expert - Registry
'cleaners' are best avoided.

And why specifically would that be? You've given nothing of any import
to back that up. Please cite something, anything, to back up your
contentions. As long as it's from a reliable source, even if it's a
cleaner mfr, let's have some cites to back things up here. Better yet,
some true case histories from forums, etc., that are repeatable and
recognizable?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

Hello BobN

A good friend of mine has a computer repair shop. In the month of Jan
of this year he had 36 systems to repair from registry errors brought
about by these Reg Cleaners. On 2 of them he had to rebuild the
system from bottom up since the Reg backups that were created were
not accessible because the system was not booting.

By what forensic method/s did this friend determine that those were
caused by registry cleaners?

In particular I'd have to seriously question the bare metal rebuilds
but for one month those numbers are terribly skewed by something other
than registry cleaners. Well, unless he or someone else was feeding
those same machines a diet of maliciously designed registry cleaners,
that is.
If you're going to claim that's in any way typical, I am going to
call you an outright liar without some explanation. Blind statements
are easy to make; making them believable is another story, and that's
all I'm asking for here. And that would depend a lot on the forensics:
HOW does/did he determine that a registry cleaner was the root cause of
the problem?
Which registry cleaners comprised the list and in what mix?
Or is he simply assuming that because there was a registry cleaner
there, that it caused the problem? Such a case would make it mandatory
to know the names/mix of product in order to add any amount of
verification.

Did his repair logs show something in the order of 36,000 to 360,000
units repaired that month? It would almost have to in order to have
that kind of statistic show up.

And how many more of these shops are doing the same across the
country.

Not many. In fact, he may be alone. If he were very big in the
industry I'd expect him to know about things like that, actually.
What's his URL? I'd like to see what he's all about. No malicious
intentions whatsoever; would just like to see his site and gauge his
level of expertise, etc..

Very few of these people that bring in their computers to

different shops will post here since they are not aware of newsgroups
that can possibly help.

lol, then again, maybe they're aware of groups with closed minded
spidiots spewing misinformation, too. This is akin to the MVP awhile
back that couldn't fathom anyone not being aware of Mmm, huh, or aumha
more precisely. These groups are VERY well known by almost everyone I
come in contact with, except the specific named groups aren't so clear
to them. They're hard to miss on any machine with MS software on it
though; it's full of links and references to them.

These are Family oriented computers that are

off the grid from most people like you knowing the bad effect that
these reg cleaners can do. How many in Europe. Gets close to the
number that you are mentioning.
Or Asia,Australia

Huh. Perhaps YOU know what point you were trying to make there but it's
lost on me. Looks more like grasping for words in order to have that
one more para to place here.

Registry Cleaners are snake oil remedies and to the contrary belief
that you think you posses it does not speed up your computer or give
you a lot more space.

Who has EVER mentioned that registry cleaners will give you a lot more
space? What the hell is that in reference to?
As for speeding up a machine, that's a tree/forest issue again. ANY
byte a cpu doesn't have to run code to look at, load, go round, or
otherwise not waste a machine cycle on speeds up the machine. Whether
it's a NOTICEABLE change or not is the point! Well, along with
reliability - fewer bytes means less opportunity for corruption,
glitch-catch, etc. etc. etc.. You've taken one (attempted two) aspect
of a registry cleaner and talked about it as though it were all a
registry cleaner does. And that isn't true. When you can see the
bigger picture, then you may have something you can discuss with some
level of intelligence.

Best be left alone.Dead strings in the Registry

does not do any harm

Unused (there's no such thing as "dead") registry entries can result in:
-- Nothing but an extra hundred to thousands of index entries to jump
around and be barely noticeable
-- Cause up to a 20 Second delay while it waits for something to finish
up that never finishes
-- be so voluminous that they actually do cause a slowdown by their
calls for non-existing things, that don't create error messages, and are
timed in many seconds rather than a few hundred milliseconds.
-- Have you ever noticed the slowdown in boot time, for example, as you
rebuild a machine and install , say, Microsoft Office? NO way can you
tell me that things didn't slow down.
And since Office makes thousands of registry entries total depending
on how you set it up, these can be substantial times, too. The registry
calls for function A, has to wait for function A to complete, which
could take hundreds of milliseconds, then the registry calls program A,
Program B, background tasks C, D, E, and F, and so on, and when it's
been notified that all events have been processed, it allows the screen
to be painted finally.
Now: Is that the fault of the registry or the fault of MS Office?
Some will say Office, but I say it's the registry because it's the
registry making all those calls and instantiating the code to wait for
acks/nacks or contingencies to return. If those entries weren't in the
registry then Office wouldn't run, and things would still be fast. BUT
.... Office wouldn't run, of course. Now, a cleaner looks at that, sees
that every registry entry calls somethign real, and goes about its way,
happily fniding its end.

There is no rocket science to the registry; it's just a text file of
commands. A LOT of commands. If you want to see just how active the
registry is, get a copy of regmon and let it run for a minute while our
machine idles. Normal, unbusy machine state will still create a
megabyte text file in less than a minute. Start a program and watch
how much faster the writes/reads to the registry get to be. It's a fun
at first exercise but gets pretty boring quickly and can run you out of
memory in just a few minutes if you're not set up with a good structure
to start with and lots of PM.

Last thing. I frequent 48 newsgroups which I participate in including
foreign ones and there is on an average usually 10-15 per week that
have problems brought about by the automatic Reg Cleaning Tools

Oof! You need to 1. get a life, and then, 2. get a job! But I still
have to ask again; how do you KNOW that the problems are brought on by
registry cleaners? I dispute those figures and could only beleive them
with some sort of verification. Also, 10-15 posts/week is a pretty
small number for 48 ng's unless they're some pretty darned small groups.

You've spewed a lot of supposed information here, but without any
forensics or the ability to verify anything you've said. Why should we
give any credence to your post over and above the usual dummies and
closed minds here? What is it about you that could give you some
credibility?
I am not being malicious here: IFF you can attain some credibility
on this subject, you will not only be sort of famous here because no one
else ever has, but with proper verification availability, you might even
change some minds.
I'm betting though, that you either black hole this post, or will
come back with more unsupported, unverifiable claims as you have
already done here. Quite frankly I'm having trouble not just calling
you an out and out liar, but ... in the event you can actually back up
any of your words, I am certainly willing to read and consider them.
Unlike some other closed minds here, I would even find mfr's articles
and white papers to be acceptable for verification purposes. I AM
interested in this subject matter, so see what you can do to change my
mind. I will listen, but I am not easily snowed, so make things clear,
OK?
BTW, personal opinions of a single person, etc., are not considered as
important. So quoting any of the boilerplate the closed minds here used
or anything similar just won't work. We're smarter than that.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

I'm a firm believer in keeping my registry as small as possible.
There are a number of steps I take so as not to destroy my machine
and then have to rebuild,ld it from scratch. I'm running XP prof with
all updates in place.
Before I work on the registry I make a backup of the registry. Then I
run a complete update of the drive I use for programs and associated
data using Acronis. I've found over the years that this is the best
backup tool and with the cost of HDD's it is well worth having a
large drive just for my backups and since Acronis lets you run the
recovery from a "dos" like disk I can get back to my state before
getting into trouble.
Only then will I run a registry cleaner. If there is damage and I
can't reboot I will run the recovery side of Acronis. Though this has
not happened yet.

Hope this gives you an idea that you have always to protect yourself
when changing anything of a large nature.

Good luck and regards,

That's an intelligent, thoughtful and very sensible post; not something
we see a lot of here lately<g>! I especially agree/support with/the
updating archives & backups. Anytime you do anything that has anything
to do with the OS or its under pinnings, updating backups makes a lot of
sense. Personally I use Ghost for imaging, but I also use ntbackup to
do a quick System State backup because it's quick & easy.

Everyone should do as you are doing. There would be a lot less
frustration in the world.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

On what do you base your belief that the registry should be "as small
as possible?" Do you have any data to support that belief?

Even you called it a "belief". As such it does not require verifiable
backup. That IS his belief, just as you have your own beliefs, right
or wrong as they may be.

For example: Have you timed how long is takes your computer to start
before and after you have made your registry as small as possible? Can
you demonstrate that your computer runs more quickly or smoothly
because you made your registry as small as possible?

I don't know about him, but I have; several times over the years. Even
you are smart enough to know that if one has always kept their registry
clean, that they have very few numbers to make such measurements
against. You are simply being a simpleton with such questions and your
point is a power play and nothing else. You really need a good dose of
reality IMO.

The registry cleaner marketing machine tries to appeal to people's
common sense -

As does EVERY program's author/manufacturer/supporter etc. etc. Come
ON, what kind of moronic thinking is that? Would YOU produce a Qwidget
for sale and list everything it cannot do and was not coded to do?
That's idiot-thinking, really!

- after all, a registry that is bloated by unnecessary

data can't possibly start Windows as quickly as one that is clean, can
it?

No, it can not. If you could think, you would know that.


It sounds so logical, and nobody likes software bloat, but the

facts do not support this assertion. There is time saved, to be sure,
but not nearly enough that you would notice it.

OH, yes they definitely do support it. EVERY machine cycle is time
passed. Now, as to whether it's noticeable or not, that's another
story. Usually, no, it's not. But in some cases, yes, it's very, very
noticeable and even a root of a problem. The real "problem", which you
yourself feed, is that the registry is not usually the cause of a
noticeable slowdown and not the first thing to be checking out. But
under the right circumstances at the right time, they are useful to
either eliminate the possiblity, or discover that there is some sort of
problem there. You guys are all too myopic to be able to see the forest
anymore. In fact, you only see trees one at a time lately.

(You can try your hand at the math: What is the bottleneck on the way
from your boot drive to the CPU -- possibly the PCI bus -- and how
long would it take to load an extra thousand or so registry keys?)

*"Thousand"?* Office alone introduces THOUSANDS of registry keys.
Haven't you EVER noticed the impact of installing Office? Part of that
is the registry, and it IS measureable, as you well know.
I do like one thing though; you have at least intimated somethign else
besides registry timing as a possibility. Still way too myopic, but a
step in the right direction.

BTW: The Acronis boot disk is Linux, not DOS. True Image is excellent
software, as long as you use it for manual, full images, and then only
if the boot disk has drivers for your hardware.

lol, SO? Hmm, on second read, that is informational; I didn't realize
Acronis was only good for manual, full images, and that there were such
error possibilities for its boot disk. Perhaps you'd be happier with
BootItNG or Ghost. Neither has such problems; it's all pulled together
and gets there automagically if you use their ISO image. Thanks for
alerting me to how bad Acronis TI is. I don't need a program with those
kinds of short comings; next time I compare alternatives like I'm prone
to do once a year or so, I'll keep that in mind. Or is that all BS like
your spews on registry cleaners? You'll have to forgive me, but if I
want to know that kind of thing, I'll do it on my own rather than trust
anything you say.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

You think I have nothing else to do?

Well, I do anyway, don't know about him. You do tend to blackhole
anyone that disagrees with you but doesn't endanger your power plays,
you know.

In order to function, an operating system needs driver support for the
computer's essential hardware.

Read the True Image user forum to see if users have complained in the
past about having no hardware support for RAID, network cards and
eSATA. ---

Read ANY user forum to see if the members don't have problems with
EVERYTHING in the programs and what they won't do. I don't use TI
anymore but I doubt they're any different than any other group. You see
people with problems on the forums, not people for whom everything is
working well. Now, what %age of the discussions are attributed to the
product and what %age to other things like cockpit error,
misunderstanding, misreads, never RTFM, etc. etc. etc. etc.. Those
places are for HELP, NOT in general to see what's wrong with a product.
Unless you understand sociology, that's a pathetic place to get
information about how useful something is or isn't. Whooooosh!

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

Oh if Tolstoy would have only shortened War and Peace by one paragraph
it would have made it so much faster to read his novel! I'm sure
everyone would read it... twice!

John

AS opposed, say, to you who couldn't get past page iv and never did find
it in Cliff Notes? When you figure out how to state a useful analogy,
even with sarcasm, let us know, OK?

 

[Twayne]

Do you really expect anyone to believe this obvious fabrication?
C'mon!

I don't know about him, but I could name 5 others who do. Mostly he's
used a boilerplate to put together some claims for it with anything to
support anything.

I believe it. Yup, sure I do.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

Believe it or not that is how it is and this was no fabrication.

lol, talk about redundant fabrication! At least he gave us the option
to not believe; so I won't. In which case it must be a fabrication.
Right? It does say I can not believe it, that that it is "no
fabrication" should I choose to not believe it?

Ulp!

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

What reason is it that you call it a fabrication? Give some facts.

WWWWoooowww!! Please e-mail me at (e-mail address removed) ASAP!

 

[Twayne]

Well, I owned a computer shop much larger than the one you refer to I
am sure. In 22 years I never had a single computer brought in to
repair a registry damaged by the use of a registry cleaner. I
frequent as many newsgroups as you do, and it is certainly true that
I have seen more posts reporting system damage from Windows upgrades
than from registry cleaners. The simple truth which the "usual crowd"
refuses to admit is that many millions, yes many, of people use
registry cleaners routinely. The fact that all registry cleaners
back up the registry before changes are made completely negates the
scare mongering boilerplate of the "usual crowd."

I don't have near that much experience as either of you, not getting
into stuff like this until I was forced into retirement by my health,
but ... the bit about never having a PC brought in to repair damage done
by a registry cleaner is at least belivable and matches my own
experience, including that of my own computers too.

A major omission here by many is that the forensics of making such a
determination have been quietly and completely ignored. I could be
wrong, but I don't think there is any way to tell if a registry cleaner
caused any problems in general. Hmm: Actually, I do know of 2 specific
ways to tell now I think about it, but rathr than arm the dissenters
here with that info, I'll keep it to myself for a week or so. If you
really can't think of how to tell at least in some cases, ask me again
in about a week and I'll respond to it<g>. I'd rather wait to see if
someone else in particular comes up with it first.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

PT Barnum was right. There's one born every second and your one of
them. Registry cleaners do absolutely nothing to improve computer
performance or to keep it in a good working order.

Completely wrong headed.

At best they give

users a warm fuzzy feeling by making them think that removing a few
orphaned entries in the registry does something good and at worse they
bug up your computer.

Sure. Same as verifiation after doing a backup; guess you've never ever
used that too, huh? Or more yet, you probably don't even do backups
because your machine is so perfect it'll never go borked, right?

Your assertion that "All registry cleaners back

up the registry first" is admission enough by you that these cleaners
do at times cause problems, sometimes they cause problems that are
serious enough to prevent the computer from booting.

For sure: Just like using any program in MS Office, Visio, WP, OO.o,
Acronis, Ghost, etc. etc. etc.. It's quie a jump to go from "back up
the registry first" to that being proof of being no good. It should be
normal practice to back up the registry, just as it is to back up the
entire machine or at least important data. Even Acronis, at my last
look had a para about backing up before I installed it. I guess that
makes it proof TI is no good either, huh? It's typical of many programs
to actually put in writing to back up the registry, the machine,
whatever, depending on what's happening to it. I have to assume from
your jump though, that you never do those things, so it's pretty obvious
your own foolishness and stupidity are going to have you doing a few
more rebuilds than you've already done in order to keep your machine at
some level or operability. What a moron.

I can't resist this either: I have NEVER heard anyone actually claim
that a registry cleaner prevented their machine from boothing
afterwards. Although it IS possible, I'd say it's LESS possible by
thousands of magnitudes than the situation where running chkdsk can
result in a permanent inability to boot into even Safe Mode.
Chkdsk is a LOT more likely to cause such a fiasco simply because if
it has the right set of circumstances, it can misinterpret things and
remove something necessary. Then that error leads to another because of
the missing object, and on and on it goes until the machine is going to
be completely dead in the waer next time it's restarted or turned on
after a shut down. I would estimate chkdsk to be thousands of times
more dangerous than any reputable registry cleaner, which is nearly
incapable of preventing machine from booting by the very nature of its
design and the robustness of the XP registry.
One should always run chkdsk in the non-repair mode first, to see how
many errors it finds unless it has been run regularly in the past.

Why on earth

bother with useless programs that can possibly damage your operating
system while giving zero benefits in return?

No reason. But that isn't what's being discussed here. What's being
discussed here is registry cleaners; which are clearly not useless,
don't damage the operating system, and can provide substantial benefits
to the user. I have many years experience with them myself and know many
others who also have the same experience I have had. Not a single
person I know has ever had a registry cleaner botch their operating
system.
I love knowing that people like you never use them. THAT might be a
false comfort feeling, but ... I don't think it is<G>.
I think your Mom wants you to go potty and get to bed now jonny.

Regards,

Twayne

John

I knew that would come back to bite him, but ... you're the Barnum
pundit, not he.

 

[Twayne]

<see below>
---
Leonard Grey
Errare humanum est ....

It's easy to blow holes in the advertising for registry cleaners. The
fact is, no one has published reliable before-and-after benchmarks
proving the claims attributed to registry cleaners. And no one will,
because it can't be done.

That's quite a load of actual facts bent around a lot of BS there
lennie. You obviously must be a shut-in in more ways than one to not
have seen the thousands of product comparisons and funtionality
comparisons written on registry cleaners et al.

Now as for your silliest comment that it can't be done.

YOU can do it, right on your own desktop. ANYONE can do it, right on
their own desktop. I have done it, right on my own desktop on my
production machine, my sandbox, and my win2k Pro Server, my laptop and
my sister's and my nephew's laptops, running XP Home, Pro, and MC
editions (XP underneath a media shell).

You think people are stupid but you are very wrong; many very
intelligent people are reading here everyday and all are laughing at
your antics and will especially do so with this latest one. I won't
though, because it's pathetic to be so ignorant; I actually almost feel
sorry for you but not quite, due to your abrasiveness and your continual
lies and obvious major intent to concentrate on the lies.

In some instances, you don't even need any timing methods; the
differences can be so substantial as to be easily observed.

In other cases a stopwatch may be necessary because there are points
where they are close enough to not be able to detect whether it actually
improved any timing or not.

And in yet other cases it may be necessary to use monitors to see the
differences. But the changes are ALWAYS positive and in the proper
direction; faster. Sure, it might be best to use a variant of C or VB
maybe, for those timers in order to subtract out the monitor times, but
.... even so it's not that difficult for anyone who wishes to throw
together such a script. One only needs to know the best API to get
things from. RElatively simple for any programmer.

It can definitely be done. I've only gone the software timer route once
because it sounded like an interesting challenge and I didn't know how
to write the code, so I did, just to learn how. I seldom use a
stopwatch either, unless there is some pressing reason to know whether
it resulted in any changes or not.
Most of the time, IFF it's the reigistry causing problems, the
differences are going to be large, often in the 20 Second or magnitudes
of 20 Seconds, and those are easily noticeable. 99.9% of the time
that's all I'm interested in. And over 90% of the time, I never even
get to the registry itself because the problems are elsewhere and unless
for some reason I need to eliminate the reigistry, I never even run the
cleaner/s.
One of the times I'll ofen use a cleaner though, is if I'm going to
go into the registry manually. I'll run the cleaner just to get the
chaff and junk out of the way to make things clearer, easier to
negotiate and get around in quicker. If you've ever tried to surf
around a 3 year old registry that's never been maintained, you'll know
what I'm talking about. But, I doubt you do.

Yes, I've snipped away the rest of your snivel/drivel; nothing useful or
new to me there. Is anyone can make it thru your snottiness, there are
some salient points there, but the link you stole all that from would
have been a better reference. At least it would have been complete.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: if you do a google on
"registry cleaner" +comparison
exactly as written there, you will get, as of this moment in time,
"
Results 1 - 10 of about 214,000 for "registry cleaner" +comparison.
(0.42 seconds)
"

Now, if you only search for bench marks as:

Results 1 - 10 of about 98,000 for "registry cleaner" +"bench mark".
(0.28 seconds

you get a lot fewer hits. Gee, ONLY 98,000. Huh! But I think that's
enough to find one or two good ones from. I can go further, but you're
not worth more than a few seconds to help out plus the few minutes it
took to touch-type this for you.
That's just a couple more than you said existed, I think.

Well, it's been fun but it's time for dinner, so ...

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

Would someone take a look at the image and explain to me what line
would cause registry damage and why or how the specific line could
leave my computer unbooteable. I've used CCleaner for the past six
years and run it several times a week including the registry cleaner
and have never had any problem with it, but judging from your
comments, my good luck may be about to run out anytime...

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/1089/ccleaneruo9.jpg

LOL! Verrryyyy, funnneeeeee!

Sooner or later, if your computer lasts long enough, every program on it
will crash and every line there will come under question. Hope you're a
long liver!

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

Your last phrase "my good luck may be about to run out anytime..." is
the significant one. None of us claims that every time someone uses a
registry cleaner a terrible problem results. The point is that there
is always a *risk* of a problem, and the problem could render the
computer unable to boot.

ANY program has the RISK of being corrupted such that it can stop the
computer from booting. ANY program has a RISK. The risk from a
reputable registry cleaner is even less than that of most other well
written program for many reasons I've gone into before. It's certainly
less risky than, say, running chkdsk.
I take pleasure in what I know of your machines and their states of
security and preparedness for the worst. Talk about false comforts!
I'm not sure how false it is though. As you like to say, it's not IF,
it's WHEN.

Since using a registry cleaner does nothing

of any real value, it is foolhardy to run that risk.

Using a registry cleaner does MUCH of REAL VLUE and it is WISE to run
them, especially when there is a suspicion that it is the source of a
problem that cleaning the registry may solve. As in, an install glommed
onto a leftover registry entry that caused the program to crash because
the entry didn't belong to that program. A registry cleaner not only
spotted it and offered to fix it, but it was also the ONLY problem it
found, making it nice and easy to continue.

Although the CCleaner registry cleaner is among the least dangerous
registry cleaners, its risk is somewhat less than most of them. But
since it also achieves no benefit, running it is a bad bargain just as
it is with any other.

Just what IS this capitulation of yours, anyway? The whole para makes
no sense and is contradictory to many of your own posts and boilerplates
you're becoming so fond of. You just can't be original, can you?
Ccleaner IS of benefit, running it is a GOOD bargain since it's free.

You're losing it, I think.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[John John (MVP)]

AS opposed, say, to you who couldn't get past page iv and never did find
it in Cliff Notes? When you figure out how to state a useful analogy,
even with sarcasm, let us know, OK?

Cliff Notes!!! That's what you call reading a book? What a joke!
Coming from you it's nothing surprising.

John

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Well, I owned a computer shop much larger than the one you refer to I am
sure. In 22 years I never had a single computer brought in to repair a
registry damaged by the use of a registry cleaner. I frequent as many
newsgroups as you do, and it is certainly true that I have seen more posts
reporting system damage from Windows upgrades than from registry cleaners.
The simple truth which the "usual crowd" refuses to admit is that many
millions, yes many, of people use registry cleaners routinely. The fact
that all registry cleaners back up the registry before changes are made
completely negates the scare mongering boilerplate of the "usual crowd."

I think the bad reputation of Registry Cleaners relating to damage to the OS
(Registry) is due to those who have problems with their machines will often
succumb to the hype that a Registry Cleaner will help. After running a
'Cleaner' and not achieving anything they then take the machine to a 'shop'
/'expert'. Of course they will explain they have run a Registry Cleaner and
hence a conclusion is made that the Cleaner was responsible for the problem
whereas the problem existed before the 'Cleaner' was employed.

I am of the opinion that Registry Cleaners do not damage the OS and the view
expressed by many of the resident experts that sometimes they do and
sometimes they don't does not stand up to logical scrutiny neither does the
contention it depends upon the machine. If they (a) Cleaner causes damage
to the OS it will be repeatable and therefore the cause can be identified
and corrected. The Registry Cleaner program code is not selective in its
application.

I am also of the opinion that Registry Cleaners are of no benefit whatsoever
and will sometimes cause third party programs to fail. This because some
Registry Cleaners remove empty keys that some programs need hence these
programs will malfunction after using a cleaner.

The advice given by many to avoid Registry Cleaners is good advice.
Problems with a machine will not be solved by these programs and as many
have stated they may cause problems with third party programs and are never
the solution.

 

[Unknown]

They are NOT spewing snake oil myths. They are simply teaching new users how
to stay out of trouble.
Your approach is to teach new users recklessness.