Its my understanding MS has stated registry cleaners have no affect on the
performance of winxp and win2k? (Though I could'nt locate a deffinative MS
kb article)
Not quite true. IMO it's not that there's no "benefit"; it's just
that the risk is too high to make it worthwhile.
Bottom line: If you don't have the time and skills to hand-optimize
your registry, you don't have the time and skills to troubleshoot
problems that may result from automatic registry cleaning tools.
MS's assertion that you can System Restore your way out of trouble is
flawed in many ways:
- SR rollback does more than just undo the registry clean
- you may not realize all is not well until much time passes
- the more time passes, the more side-effects follow "restore"
- to do a System Restore, you must be able to run Windows OK
- but a botched registry may make Windows unbootable
The speed benefit from shrinking the registry is small, and is better
attained by not installing junk you don't need, and always properly
uninstalling apps rather than simply deleting their subtrees.
The potential impact of cleaning is large, because what the cleaner
thinks is not needed, may be needed. We've seen this all the time
with 3rd-party cleaners, especially when the OS changes via upgrades,
Service Packs, patches, or new subsystems; MS may be able to avoid
those pitfalls, but can still get ambushed by unexpected behaviour of
3rd-party software. You won't know what the tool did, so how to fix?
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Tech Support: The guys who follow the
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