Mike Hall - MVP wrote:

....

As long as Windows 9x conventions are applied to Windows NT and its
successors, the myths regarding how Win 2000, XP, Vista and Win 7
process the registry, fonts and everything else which could be a
problem in Win 9x will continue.

Myths; good choice, because people applying 9x conventions to 2k & XP is
just that. You're good at rationalizing with whatever thought may occur
to you but that doesn't make it factual. IME the majority of people
here without closed minds see the situation in a clearer and more
logical sense than you can. You have mired yourself into a corner with
your own XP myths and proclamations made all over the 'net and now you
feel that you cannot admit reality because it would make you look less
than perfect. In actual fact, you know the situation as it really is
but don't dare to admit the reality, reliability and capabilities of
today's registry cleaners. You've even tried a few tiny concessions
here and there, like cc comments, but ended up conflicting with your own
words and rather than appear to have opened your mind a crack, securely
locked it down again.

Windows NT and its successors ignore orphaned entries. They may fall
over if they come across active corrupted entries, but registry
cleaners do not fix this type of problem..

So does VB and Python, and PHP and a plethora of other coded works. You
are trying to imply (which is all you ever do in your rationalized
world) that "orphaned" entries never cause any kind of impact ever in
any way, and that is patently untrue. You think that because a
key/whatever is never called (and orphans often DO get called, BTW, by
other orphans in some situations) it costs zero time. You're trying to
imply that the registry is only READ, and that it never executes an
instruction or command. IMO your understanding of the registry's
internal workings are actually abysmally deficient but good enough for
you to grab onto single events and then try to build those into
all-encompassing rationalizations to push onto what you consider your
"minions". You can occasionally see a tree in the forest but you never
address more then one tree and I doubt you ever even notice there is a
forest there or your attitudes would be different.

Now, an "active" corrupted entry, whatever you mean by that, is not
usually going to make the thing "fall". The vast majority of the time,
it's going to result in an error message.
You then imply that registry cleaners do not fix that "type of
problem", but often they do/will, because the cleaner WILL report it not
able to execute and offer the normal various possibilities for repair.
Thanks to the robustness of the registry, it seldom ever occurs, but
when it does a decent registry cleaner will point it out for the user.
I only recall that ever happening once, long ago, but I believe I have
seen it happen. In that case it wasn't a single corruption; an entire
key was corrupted and made no sense in any way. In that case I
seriously suspect it was corruption that occurred during the write TO
the registry by an installed program; otherwise it wouldn't have been so
neatly confined as it was.

The registry is a very robust thing and it's actually hard to make it
'fall' on purpose. In fact, many have seen the results of trying to
remove something the system needed when the deleted entry is simply
re-created by the system. Many parts of it you couldn't corrupt if you
wanted to. Even adding unallowed data often won't hurt anything. Enter
a 4 where the only possibilities are 0 or 1, and you'll get back a 0
next time you look at it!

Add to that the fact that all you guys pushing all these myths have
NEVER provided a single authoritative piece of information to support
your myths, and it pretty well wraps up your credibility on the subject.
Even MS has dabbled with registry cleaners for along time and still are
doing so, so obviously they don't buy the "will trash" and "imminent..."
this & that attitudes you try to push. You guys need to stick with
subjects you can verify, clarify, reproduce and otherwise use factual
data for. The lack of anything like that has gone on for so long now
that anything that any of you did decide to provide would likely be
suspect or it would have been posted long ago. Anyone can write an
article on um,ha and then come here and recommend that article as
"proof" that what they say is true; I always have to giggle when I see
that happen. It has been as serious hit on the credibility of the web
site, not to mention the nearly current unrecognized status of being an
MVP as some are.

I thank you for this opportunity to once more expose the myths being
pushed by a small ring of loud and noisy closed minds here and on a few
other groups.

HTH,

Twayne`