Recommendations for best Registry Cleaner

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles C. Perkins
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles C. Perkins

I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the benefits
of doing it, but I am under the impression that it could make my
computer run quicker and better.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Chaz
 
Charles said:
I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the
benefits of doing it, but I am under the impression that it could make
my computer run quicker and better.

Any Suggestions?
Click to expand...

Do a Google Groups Advanced Search in microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
for "registry cleaners" and you will get a ton of posts about them.
Most techs don't recommend them, but you can read the arguments for and
against and decide for yourself.

Malke
 
You will get all kinds of "advice" and opinions on this and at the end
of the day you won't be any further ahead than you are now, if anything
you will be more confused about the issue than you were before you
posted. Be prepared to read adamant and vehement positions on the issue.

Unless you have specific problems with your registry no amount of
cleaning will make your computer run quicker and better. If anything it
might do the opposite.

John
 
Charles C. Perkins said:
I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the benefits
of doing it, but I am under the impression that it could make my
computer run quicker and better.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Chaz
Click to expand...

The best registry cleaner is no registry cleaner. Using
them makes at best no difference to your PC's performance.
At worst they will cripple your machine. There is one class of
people who derive considerable benefit from registry cleaners.
The sellers.
 
Be extremely careful about these programs. I made the mistake of google'ing
the topic and trying a few different kinds with the net result of getting
viruses and heap of spyware on my PC. Long story short - 1 hard disk and
reformat and OS reinstall later and i'm back up and running *sigh*.

My advice, stay away from the free ones. Those are the ones that usually
have the spyware and viruses bundled together. Their are exceptions to this
rule however. RegSeeker is a powerful cleaner (found more entries than the
paid-for programs) and has a host of other features as well not to mention
being free (http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm). You don't even have to
install it.

That being said, after my reformat and reinstall, I haven't used any
registry cleaning software again for fear that despite using a program that
is virus and spyware free; the program may accidentally delete a critical
reg entry. (this happened to me as well). This, in my opinion, can be true
for ALL registry cleaning software.

But if I absolutely had to use one. I'd probably use Registry Mechanic from
PC Tools
(http://www.pctools.com/registry-mechanic/offer.php?ref=google_registry).
You have to pay for it, but at least you can get support when things go
horribly wrong (which they usually do =P). One more thing - You have to
renew your subscrition for use of this software (probably every year) much
like antivirus software - which is extremely lame. C'est la vie.



Goodluck, you're gonna need it. ^_~
 
Charles said:
I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the benefits
of doing it, but I am under the impression that it could make my
computer run quicker and better.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Chaz
Click to expand...

I use Crap Cleaner. It's free( donation ware).
This has a registry cleaning section.
http://www.ccleaner.com/


To defrag the registry use Page Defrag from Sysinternals. It's free.
http://www.sysinternals.com/

HTH, Major Tom.
 
I use www.pctools.com Registry Mechanic.It works well and IMHO is better
than the BIG name products from Symantec etc... When i have systems that are
in trouble this tool always comes through..

Cheers.

IG
 
Hi Charles:

I have seen many unfavorable results from use of registry cleaners and few
good results. I do not use them nor do I recommend them.

Mark
 
Sometime ago I downloaded a Registry cleaner from Microsoft which I used on
Windows 98. Can't find it now.
 
Stuart Nathan said:
Sometime ago I downloaded a Registry cleaner from Microsoft which I used on
Windows 98. Can't find it now.
Click to expand...

I think your post wins the prize for the most useless
contribution in this thread. By a big margin.
 
Hello,
After you read some of the posters information and you want to continue,
suggest you backup the registry.
Have been using the following for awhile:
crapcleaner, regseeker, jv16powertools and erunt for registry backup. These
are all the free versions. Suggest never use any cleaner in the "Auto" mode.
Sysinternals: page defrag "defrags what Windows does not defrag"and ntregopt
"optimizes registry after using cleaners", these are free.
I download, install, run and remove many programs every month and I found
that using cleaners in this situation is of some help.
take care.
beamish.
 
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Charles C.
Perkins laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the
benefits of doing it, but I am under the impression that it
could make my computer run quicker and better.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I use JV16 Powertools about once a month. Whatever you choose, be
aware that messing with the Registry for anything except an
emergency fix is courting with disaster if you aren't careful and
aren't 100.000% aware of what you're doing.

'Tis true that the Registry accumulates crap left over from old
installs, uninstalls, updates, etc., and the various
install/ininstall programs leave hundreds - sometimes thousands -
of orphans after they're done. Also, despite what MVPs will tell
you, Windoze itself creates crap and even corrupts its own
Registry.

At a /minimum/ you should set a Restore Point before messing with
the Registry at all. Preferably, you should have a recent full
partition image in case things should go awry.

Finally, do /NOT/ allow /any/ cleaner to run on full automatic! Let
it create its list, then use the giant CPU between your ears to
decide what is and what is not clutter. And, remember the old
saying "don't try to fix things that aren't broken."
 
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Pegasus
(MVP) laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
The best registry cleaner is no registry cleaner. Using
them makes at best no difference to your PC's performance.
At worst they will cripple your machine. There is one class of
people who derive considerable benefit from registry cleaners.
The sellers.
Click to expand...
yep, I can always count on an MVP to spout the company line here.

Say, Pegasus, you ever look at your own Registry after
uninstalling software or doing updates? Easy example: I needed to
uninstall and reinstall Paint Shop Pro 9 last year, used
Add/Remove programs and even Corel's ZapPSP utility. And, JV16
Powertools still found some 5,000 orphaned Registry entries! You
people are wise to advice the novices not to mess with things
they don't understand, but efffiency can be gained by judiciously
cleaning crap out of the Registry, including dead keys, obsolete
keys, and the like. Of course, a RP should be set first and one
should have a recent disk image.

And, like most useful utilities marketed by 3rd party developers,
it has always astounded me that a guy so supposedly as bright as
Bill the Gates doesn't put them all immediately out-of-business
by writing and selling his own utilities. Naturally, if he did,
they would be about as creative, innovative and bug-free as other
microcrap stuff. The current ROTFLMYA is Vista. For the flag-ship
product and major revenue source, for M$ to "voluntarily" delay
release a year must mean that even all those brilliant people
Bill talked about during his step down bloviant speech couldn't
make it work!
 
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Pegasus
(MVP) laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...
I think your post wins the prize for the most useless
contribution in this thread. By a big margin.
Click to expand...
no, yours wins the prize for most useless company shill line in
this thread
 
NoStop said:
Your computer is eXPeriencing the typical bitrot that comes after a
time of running this toy operating system. Your best fix is to
reinstall the "o/s" from scratch and start fresh again. This will
give you some time to once again enjoy the speed your existing
hardware offers you, until you once again start to eXPerience this
slowdown. It's an endless circle designed to force Windoze users to
constantly upgrade their hardware in the hopes of having a machine
that doesn't bog down. The other solution is to switch to a real
operating system like GNU/Linux that doesn't experience this
silliness. Then you can once again enjoy your computer, get off the
upgrade bandwagon and have a powerful, robust and secure computing
experience.

Taking the second option above will also result in attacks by the
Windoze Fanboys around here who have a stake in the whole
MickeyMouse-Hardware Manufacturers alliance. Be prepared to hear
about how they NEVER experience any slowdowns with their Windoze
systems. They're the same people that are always purchasing the
newest and fastest latest hardware too. :-) Wonder why?
Click to expand...

And someone who takes your advice, installs Linux, plays with it for a few
months, installs and removes several programs like a typical Windows user,
won't have several unknown and useless config files spread all over the
place? I'm not saying this will be harmful to the Linux system. It just uses
hard drive space needlessly. It's about as harmful as most perceived
registry bloat problems.
 
All Things Mopar said:
Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Pegasus
(MVP) laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...

yep, I can always count on an MVP to spout the company line here.

Say, Pegasus, you ever look at your own Registry after
uninstalling software or doing updates? Easy example: I needed to
uninstall and reinstall Paint Shop Pro 9 last year, used
Add/Remove programs and even Corel's ZapPSP utility. And, JV16
Powertools still found some 5,000 orphaned Registry entries! You
people are wise to advice the novices not to mess with things
they don't understand, but efffiency can be gained by judiciously
cleaning crap out of the Registry, including dead keys, obsolete
keys, and the like. Of course, a RP should be set first and one
should have a recent disk image.

And, like most useful utilities marketed by 3rd party developers,
it has always astounded me that a guy so supposedly as bright as
Bill the Gates doesn't put them all immediately out-of-business
by writing and selling his own utilities. Naturally, if he did,
they would be about as creative, innovative and bug-free as other
microcrap stuff. The current ROTFLMYA is Vista. For the flag-ship
product and major revenue source, for M$ to "voluntarily" delay
release a year must mean that even all those brilliant people
Bill talked about during his step down bloviant speech couldn't
make it work!

--
ATM, aka JerryR

"Everything that can be invented has been invented" - U. S.
Patent Commissioner, Charles H. Duell, 1899
Click to expand...

The registry is an indexed database. Having a few hundred
(or a few thousand) orphaned entries, left behind by incompletely
uninstalled applications, makes no difference to access speed.
On the other hand, if the applications are still installed and
active then deleting their registry entries is probably a bad
idea.
whatsoever to access speed
 
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