T
Twayne
In all fairness to the readers here, it's probably a good time now to
make some points about the use of registry cleaners that seem to have
become buried in the details of a flame war induced the the naysayers
who say to never, ever use a registry cleaner and promise the readers
that it WILL, not might, create problems for them.
ANY application will, over time, create some sort of a problem for
the system. In my experience, and I don't know why this is, the
registry cleaners I have used have been the source of a lot fewer
problems (as in none) than Microsoft's own software and its attendant
file corruption and bad habits employment. While I have experience many
MS application problems, many which caused freezes, etc., I have never
yet encountered such a problem with any registry cleaner that I use.
Why? I don't know. Intiuitively I would have actuall expected a
similar problem with at least one of my registry cleaners by now, but so
far, knock on wood, I have not.
That said, it's obviously, like any other application, necessary for
the user to be certain they source their programs from reliable sources
of known stable and reliable programs.
Now let's look at some other points w/r to XP:
1. The registry is not inherently the major culprit in a machine
slowing down or taking a long time to boot or to shut down or restart.
Most of the time running a registry cleaner will not result in an
improvement of the slowness observed in a computer. A good one will
offer to throw out som unused goodies such as references to programs
that were uninstalled, files that were deleted, misdirected access
attempts by poorly written software (even MS has done that) and several
other things. It's fine to let that stuff go and get rid of it so it
doesn't have to be dealt with in the future, just as you usually have to
go back and delete the directories/folders they used and files that are
left over.
There are many instances of uninstalled programs still referencing
those "leftover" files and folders, and depending on how many of those
exist, can eventually result in slower boot times and a slower machine
overall. In some cases, just deleting those leftover files/folders can
cause the registry to throw an error. But the user has no way of
knowing what happened of IF that is what happened.
Do not misunderstand me: There ARE ways the registry can really slow
a machine down; but those are in the minority and don't occur very
often.
2. Registry bloat in and of itself is NOT much of a problem for the
registry as a rule. Being text based, it's very fast to read it, and
execute the instructions contained in it.
3. It does not necessarily require huge bloat or gazillions of problems
for the registry to make boot times extend to seemingly infinite
lengths. A few "well" placed entries in the registry where the search
allowed time of 20 seconds has to pass before it continues to the next
item, is one culprit. Three of those and you've added a full minute to
the boot time. 6 of them two minutes, and so on. The Event Viewer,
something many people are unaware of, is one of only a very few places
you will ever notice warnings to tip you off to what's happening.
BootVis for XP will show them to you rather well, but BootViz in
itself can create some problems so I don't really recommend it for the
neophyte. BootVis gives you a labeled graph of the boot sequences, and
the 20 second timeouts stand our rather well against the other
milli/micro second operations it lists.
This may also occur in places like program starts, program exits, and
other similar activity. That 20 second default can be shortened, but
this is ill advised, especially if the machine if part of a network.
4. Then you have the installer-stopping leftover registry keys, again
hard to spot. Usually just a reinstall will fix it, but ... if it was
poorly written software, perhaps not. Registry cleaners get those out
of the way quickly and routinely without the user even being aware of
them most of the time, and never yet in my experience, causing any crash
to happen on the machines.
5. Problematic installs are often cured with a simple registry cleaning
schedule. Cleaned on a schdule, a user will seldom run into this
problem. But let them build and eventually it's going to occur unless
it's a seldom modified machine.
6. Installing applications, even doubling or tripling the number of
installations on a machine does not slow down the registry IF it has
been maintained. This particular XP machine has been running for over
three years now, closer to four I think, and the boot times today are
the same as after the first initial build. Total time from pressin
Restart to have a usable, functional window in front of me is
approximately three minutes and a few seconds. The bullets going across
the logo screen vary from around 7 1/2 trips to 8 and a half, depending
on what I was last doing with it. But that's only part of the overall
process. The last about a minute of the restarting process isn't boot
operation in a way; the system is starting up all the background
processes for the icons that are going to become visible in the System
Tray during that last several seconds.
Almost all of the cases above can be seen with a little effort by any
user with a little background in windows.
Keep in mind though, that you may not get the improvement you want from
registry cleaning, not because it's dangerous or useless, but because
the culprits are often elsewhere in the system. While the registry
cleaning might improve things, and is quick and easy to do, it might not
be much of an improvement, or none at all if you routinely use a
cleaner. You need to actually look at the overall picture as best you
can and use the tools at hand.
Whether a registry cleaner is used for the process of elimination or
the registry itself turns out to be the major culprit of the slowness
problem/s, a good cleaner is valuable, can put everything back if you
make a misstep, and never causes any major problems. Several of them
fit that bill.
Enjoy ... I'm considering showing how you can watch some of these
operations at work and get repeatable results from them. It's a case of
picking the right program to do the right tasks.
make some points about the use of registry cleaners that seem to have
become buried in the details of a flame war induced the the naysayers
who say to never, ever use a registry cleaner and promise the readers
that it WILL, not might, create problems for them.
ANY application will, over time, create some sort of a problem for
the system. In my experience, and I don't know why this is, the
registry cleaners I have used have been the source of a lot fewer
problems (as in none) than Microsoft's own software and its attendant
file corruption and bad habits employment. While I have experience many
MS application problems, many which caused freezes, etc., I have never
yet encountered such a problem with any registry cleaner that I use.
Why? I don't know. Intiuitively I would have actuall expected a
similar problem with at least one of my registry cleaners by now, but so
far, knock on wood, I have not.
That said, it's obviously, like any other application, necessary for
the user to be certain they source their programs from reliable sources
of known stable and reliable programs.
Now let's look at some other points w/r to XP:
1. The registry is not inherently the major culprit in a machine
slowing down or taking a long time to boot or to shut down or restart.
Most of the time running a registry cleaner will not result in an
improvement of the slowness observed in a computer. A good one will
offer to throw out som unused goodies such as references to programs
that were uninstalled, files that were deleted, misdirected access
attempts by poorly written software (even MS has done that) and several
other things. It's fine to let that stuff go and get rid of it so it
doesn't have to be dealt with in the future, just as you usually have to
go back and delete the directories/folders they used and files that are
left over.
There are many instances of uninstalled programs still referencing
those "leftover" files and folders, and depending on how many of those
exist, can eventually result in slower boot times and a slower machine
overall. In some cases, just deleting those leftover files/folders can
cause the registry to throw an error. But the user has no way of
knowing what happened of IF that is what happened.
Do not misunderstand me: There ARE ways the registry can really slow
a machine down; but those are in the minority and don't occur very
often.
2. Registry bloat in and of itself is NOT much of a problem for the
registry as a rule. Being text based, it's very fast to read it, and
execute the instructions contained in it.
3. It does not necessarily require huge bloat or gazillions of problems
for the registry to make boot times extend to seemingly infinite
lengths. A few "well" placed entries in the registry where the search
allowed time of 20 seconds has to pass before it continues to the next
item, is one culprit. Three of those and you've added a full minute to
the boot time. 6 of them two minutes, and so on. The Event Viewer,
something many people are unaware of, is one of only a very few places
you will ever notice warnings to tip you off to what's happening.
BootVis for XP will show them to you rather well, but BootViz in
itself can create some problems so I don't really recommend it for the
neophyte. BootVis gives you a labeled graph of the boot sequences, and
the 20 second timeouts stand our rather well against the other
milli/micro second operations it lists.
This may also occur in places like program starts, program exits, and
other similar activity. That 20 second default can be shortened, but
this is ill advised, especially if the machine if part of a network.
4. Then you have the installer-stopping leftover registry keys, again
hard to spot. Usually just a reinstall will fix it, but ... if it was
poorly written software, perhaps not. Registry cleaners get those out
of the way quickly and routinely without the user even being aware of
them most of the time, and never yet in my experience, causing any crash
to happen on the machines.
5. Problematic installs are often cured with a simple registry cleaning
schedule. Cleaned on a schdule, a user will seldom run into this
problem. But let them build and eventually it's going to occur unless
it's a seldom modified machine.
6. Installing applications, even doubling or tripling the number of
installations on a machine does not slow down the registry IF it has
been maintained. This particular XP machine has been running for over
three years now, closer to four I think, and the boot times today are
the same as after the first initial build. Total time from pressin
Restart to have a usable, functional window in front of me is
approximately three minutes and a few seconds. The bullets going across
the logo screen vary from around 7 1/2 trips to 8 and a half, depending
on what I was last doing with it. But that's only part of the overall
process. The last about a minute of the restarting process isn't boot
operation in a way; the system is starting up all the background
processes for the icons that are going to become visible in the System
Tray during that last several seconds.
Almost all of the cases above can be seen with a little effort by any
user with a little background in windows.
Keep in mind though, that you may not get the improvement you want from
registry cleaning, not because it's dangerous or useless, but because
the culprits are often elsewhere in the system. While the registry
cleaning might improve things, and is quick and easy to do, it might not
be much of an improvement, or none at all if you routinely use a
cleaner. You need to actually look at the overall picture as best you
can and use the tools at hand.
Whether a registry cleaner is used for the process of elimination or
the registry itself turns out to be the major culprit of the slowness
problem/s, a good cleaner is valuable, can put everything back if you
make a misstep, and never causes any major problems. Several of them
fit that bill.
Enjoy ... I'm considering showing how you can watch some of these
operations at work and get repeatable results from them. It's a case of
picking the right program to do the right tasks.
