What are the reasons to use a registry cleaner?

[Mike]

From an MVP perspective what are the "Pros & Cons" of
using a decent registry cleaner on an XP installation. I
am not what you would call a novice user (micros in the
house since 1979) nor am I a professional programmer.

Please note that I am not interested in the names of
recommended cleaners but I am interested in the
perspective of an MVP on the requirement for using one.

Mike

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Mike

Personally I have never used a registry cleaner with XP. The XP registry
looks after itself. Using one can cause more problems than it's worth.

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups


| From an MVP perspective what are the "Pros & Cons" of
| using a decent registry cleaner on an XP installation. I
| am not what you would call a novice user (micros in the
| house since 1979) nor am I a professional programmer.
|
| Please note that I am not interested in the names of
| recommended cleaners but I am interested in the
| perspective of an MVP on the requirement for using one.
|
| Mike

 

[Serenity]

I use a reg. cleaner and from what I've read, etc...
After so long your registry gets "bogged down"
When you install things and then remove them the keys still remain in the registry.
I've found this to be true because I've went into my registry and found many things that I've deleted from my pc but their keys still remain.
I think after so long of so many keys it can cause your system to possibly crash-worst case senerio.
I use JVpowertools and I love it. I always give it to people's pcs that I work on and highly recommend it. Or any reg. cleaner for that matter.
Just simple things such as when I delete pics from my pc, I run reg. cleaner and it deletes all those keys as well.
I run mine usually every other day.
Serenity
From an MVP perspective what are the "Pros & Cons" of
using a decent registry cleaner on an XP installation. I
am not what you would call a novice user (micros in the
house since 1979) nor am I a professional programmer.

Please note that I am not interested in the names of
recommended cleaners but I am interested in the
perspective of an MVP on the requirement for using one.

Mike

 

[Wislu Plethora]

-----Original Message-----
Hi Mike

Personally I have never used a registry cleaner with XP. The XP registry
looks after itself. Using one can cause more problems than it's worth.

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups


| From an MVP perspective what are the "Pros & Cons" of
| using a decent registry cleaner on an XP installation. I
| am not what you would call a novice user (micros in the
| house since 1979) nor am I a professional programmer.
|
| Please note that I am not interested in the names of
| recommended cleaners but I am interested in the
| perspective of an MVP on the requirement for using one.
|
| Mike

In general, they're better off left alone insofar as
general maintenance is concerned. Registry cleaning and
defragging are the two most overrated "tools" for XP
maintenance, especially when NTFS is used.
That said, there may be times when a registry cleaner can
be helpful in finding specific entries when an uninstall
goes bad and the remnants are making a re-install
difficult or impossible. It can make things a little
quicker than using regedit.

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Mike - My "standard" response to this question:

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.geocities.com/ggmartau/tu.html or
direct dwnld here: http://files.webattack.com/localdl834/tun234.zip, in the
first place.)

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.


--
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP



In

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Having seen the results of inexperienced people using automated
registry "cleaners," I can only advise to you to avoid them all.

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 they claim to be.

I always use Regedit.exe. I trust my own experience and judgment
far more than I would any automated registry cleaner.


Bruce Chambers
--
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