Registry Cleaner ...

  • Thread starter Thread starter NP
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N

NP

Looking for a good free registry cleaner but don't know which to
download/use. Any thoughts please?

Thanks,

NP.
 
Hi NP - 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
 
Looking for a good free registry cleaner but don't know which to
download/use. Any thoughts please?

Thanks,

NP.
Click to expand...

One of the first things I did after installing Windows XP Pro last
week was to get a couple of registry cleaners for XP. I use
EasyCleaner 2.0.6.369 and also RegScrubXP 3.25. Both work well.
Both are free. Google them.

I've been using EasyCleaner 1.7 for years on Windows98, never with
a single problem. However, I use only the registry cleaning part
of this program. I would hesitate to recommend the file cleaning
functions of EasyCleaner.

RegScrubXP is a very basic registry cleaner, with no other
functions. I recommend that you use both of them, since one will
find stuff that the other misses.
 
Not sure why simply making a copy of user.dat and system.dat does not make a
complete, easy backup which can be scheduled, done at will, etc - also does not
work. All you need is such high tech tools as, copy or xxcopy (in a dos
environment).

Why use a special program just to make a backup copy of these 2 files?
 
howard said:
Not sure why simply making a copy of user.dat and system.dat does not
make a complete, easy backup which can be scheduled, done at will,
etc - also does not work. All you need is such high tech tools as,
copy or xxcopy (in a dos environment).

Why use a special program just to make a backup copy of these 2 files?
Click to expand...

I don't think you can do that with NTFS formatted systems such as W2K and
WXP.
 
Not sure why simply making a copy of user.dat and system.dat does not make a
complete, easy backup which can be scheduled, done at will, etc - also does not
work. All you need is such high tech tools as, copy or xxcopy (in a dos
environment).

Why use a special program just to make a backup copy of these 2 files?
Click to expand...

Cause they are 'in use' and so cannot be copied the normal way.
 
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