Registry Remover Recommendation - HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hello,

What free registry remover are recommending?

The one's I download claim to be free, but then ask for money past a
certain number of fixes.

Thank you
 
None. Don't bother with these things, they cause more harm than good.
There is no need to clean the Windows 2000 registry. Some can be used
as investigative tools but few if any can be trusted to remove what they
deem as clutter in the registry.

If you insist then try RegSeeker http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm
but DON'T trust it to automatically remove items! It might remove valid
keys. A bit safer but still not 100% try RegCleaner V4.2 build 772.
It's been pulled by the author to be replaced with a newer pay for
version but it is still available on the net, just search for it. These
can be used as tools but don't give them blind trust!

John
 
Hi John,

In my case, I am having problems with old Adobe reader registry files
and I do not know how to get rid of them. So I have to do something.

Cordially
 
Hi - 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.martau.com/ or free
direct dwnld here: http://digilander.libero.it/molearchive3/tun235.zip or
here: http://freeware4u.com/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=234, in
the first place.) (As an aside, there are, however, some third party
Registry Editors which can be of great help with both the incorrect
uninstall and with certain malware problems, especially some of
theCoolWebSearch types such as the AppInit_DLLs variant of the about:blank
version of CWS, for example. I can recommend Registrar Lite, here:
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Downright_pages/downrights_registry.htm This
is intentionally the older 2.0 version - to see their most current stuff,
take a look here: http://www.resplendence.com/registrar.)

There are a couple of specific bugs that can cause abnormal growth in either
the System or Software hives; however, they are rare, and unless these hives
in %SystemRoot%\System32\config are very, very large (in the hundreds of
megabytes), then I would council you to leave your Registry alone except for
the special circumstances I mentioned above.

I and most other MVP's that I know believe that Registry modifications of
any type are probably best done manually, very carefully, with a thorough
knowledge of what's installed on your machine, and what you're doing, and
then only when necessary. There's very little (if any!) noticeable benefit
in either space saving or speed achievable by cleaning out the Registry
except in those few cases where there's a specific problem the client is
experiencing (usually uninstall or malware related in my experience) that
needs to be fixed.

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://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ 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://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/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.

FWIW, the second question I ask clients is whether they've recently used a
Reg Cleaner or tried to restore from one. (The first question I ask is
whether they've any non-commercial Norton/Symantec software installed.
)
 
In said:
Hi John,

In my case, I am having problems with old Adobe reader registry
files and I do not know how to get rid of them. So I have to do
something.

See Jim's post too.
Do you already know which "old Adobe" keys are the problem?
What OS? What version of Adobe Reader? What symptoms? Does Adobe
offer any "cleanup tool" for their software? (I know not) Manual
removal after suitable Full Registry Backup would be my preferred
method as I have zero trust whatsoever in any registry cleaning
tool in "automatic" mode and never recommend any of them.
 
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