Ken said:
Disclaimer aside, is there anyone out there, especially MVPs, who is a fan
of this category software even for Windows XP Pro SP2, e.g. Systemworks,
I've no use for Systemworks, at all. Once a useful utility suite,
back in the days of MS-DOS, when Peter Norton was more than a picture on
the box, Norton Utilities have been becoming increasingly useless and
redundant over the years. There's little offered by NU that WinXP
cannot already do natively. And some of Systemworks's features, like
CrashGuard and CleanSweep (if they're still included) cause far more
problems then they prevent.
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 they claim 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.
What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt will be fixed by using an automated 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 shotgun 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.
I always use Regedit.exe. I trust my own experience and judgment
far more than I would any automated registry cleaner. I strongly
encourage others to acquire the knowledge, as well.
--
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
