snip
On the contrary, anyone can read for themselves in these newsgroups how
registry cleaners have damaged posters' installations, frequently beyond
repair.

snip

Whereas I agree with the many cautionary remarks concerning Registry
Cleaners and their potential for damaging to the Registry I do not, at
present, agree with the suggestion that they will damage the system beyond
repair.

I have seen no evidence that any Registry Cleaner damages the OS (WINXP et
al). Surely the protection of essential OS files is a prime requisite of
any software. I find it extremely doubtful that any Registry Cleaner would
be so sloppily coded and lack in basic testing to be released when running
it would cause damage to the OS. If I am wrong so be it, please cite a
Registry Cleaner that does damage the OS when run. I do not accept that on
some machines it does/might while or others it will not.

The Program is either coded to remove a particular entry or type of entry or
it is not, perhaps and maybes don't enter into it. It is fair to suggest
that while those that promote the use of Registry Cleaners should show their
effectiveness by objective evidence, those that claim they damage or will
damage the OS should also provide objective evidence to support their
position.

Registry Cleaners certainly have the potential to damage software, other
than the OS, by removing empty entries in the Registry that are required by
the software. That seems to me to be the prime risk. As for that causing
the machine to be beyond repair, all that is requiured is to perform a
System Repair or at worse to reinstall the damaged program.

I certainly think Registry Cleaners are unnecessary and their very name is
grossly misleading. Very simply the Registry does not need to have
redundant entries removed for the machine to operate efficiently. Those who
say otherwise are mistaken and the onus is on them to provide objective
evidence to support their position that the use of Registry Cleaners
improves machine performance. To date no evidence has been posted