In said:
Can anyone recommend a reliable and easy for novice to use
Registry Cleaner/Optimizer program?
Does anyone know anything about XP Medic for Windows at
http://xpmedic.com/?
As a self-proclaimed "novice" you should avoid such tools entirely
in my opinion.
I do not recommend any such cleaners as often enough they are
potentially damaging. Those that use them often think that the
tool is infallible and blithely click "clean now" without
understanding anything at all about the specifics. That is not a
safe and sane thing to do, even if the tool claims to make it's own
"restore" backups.
No matter what else you do, learn how to make a Full Registry
Backup (nothing at all like "Export" which is useless for the
purpose). This is the "CYA" advice. Then _always_ make such a
backup in advance of any editing of the registry. Also learn how
to use in advance the Recovery Console and how to use it to restore
the backed up hive files on disk. You may want to research and use
"ERUNT" and "NTREGOPT"
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
but all of this can also be done manually, via ntbackup.exe "ERD"
and the RC for example.
Specific manual removal of registry keys and values may be needed
occasionally, and specific "surgery" with detailed instructions may
be called for in limited cases such as malware removal (and after a
FRBackup).
No "general 'cleaning'" is needed in NTx systems registry at all.
Some registry tools can be useful to those that fully understand
what is displayed and can make individual manual decisions (after a
FRBackup is completed).
