Recommendations for best Registry Cleaner

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:20:24 -0500 from All Things Mopar 340-hp-
:
You guys really have to stop reaching conclusions based on
unfounded assumptions and without knowing any of the facts,

Pot -- kettle -- black.

*plonk*

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically, Bruce
Chambers laid this on an unsuspecting readership ...

All Things Mopar wrote:


You need to re-read my post. I was talking about crap Windoze


You can't even spell the name of the operating system,
but you feel
qualified to offer technical "insights?" Now, that's
chutzpah!

the operative syllable is "doze" is in s-l-o-w, so I think I spelt
WinDOZE just fine, thankee

--
ATM, aka JerryR

"Everything that can be invented has been invented" - U. S. Patent
Commissioner, Charles H. Duell, 1899

Why has noone picked up on my post. Far worse than a "DIRTY" registry is one
that is fragmented. NTRegOpt will reduce the size of your registry and result
in IMPROVED PERFORMANCE. Isn't that what we all want.
--
There are three types of people in computing, those that can count and those
that can't.

The Unknown P wrote:
Why has noone picked up on my post. Far worse than a "DIRTY" registry
is one that is fragmented. NTRegOpt will reduce the size of your
registry and result in IMPROVED PERFORMANCE. Isn't that what we all
want.

Because you are wrong. Defragmenting the registry only helps when Windows is
loading and the time saving is miniscule.

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Hi Charles - Given the rather uncivil tone of this thread, I wasn't going to
bother with it. However, I think you've made a correct choise. Here's my
'standard' post about the subject which has a little additional information
which you may find useful:


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 he
http://digilander.libero.it/molearchive3/tun235.zip or he
http://freeware4u.com/modules/mydown...le.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, he
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Downr...s_registry.htm This
is intentionally the older 2.0 version - to see their most current stuff,
take a look he 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 resto

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-on...runt/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.
)

--
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP/DTS/AH-VSOP
My Blog, Defending Your Machine, he
http://DefendingYourMachine.blogspot.com/



"Charles C. Perkins" wrote in message

|| HI all, and thanks for your replies. And yes, I am even more confused,
|| but I will tell you that I have decided NOT to clean my registry. I am a
|| power user, and depend on my computer for many things. I usually just
|| restore the entire computer every 4 months with the disk my computer
|| came with, but haven't done it in a while, and was just wondering.
||
|| I do appreciate the help and suggestions!
||
|| Charles Perkins
||
|| Bruce Chambers wrote:
||
||| Charles C. Perkins wrote:
|||
|||| I have never been one to clean the registry, nor do I know the
|||| benefits of doing it,
|||
|||
|||
|||
||| None, that I'm aware of...
|||
|||
|||| but I am under the impression that it could make my computer run
|||| quicker and better.
||||
|||
||| Where'd that "impression" come from?
|||
||| What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
||| all reasonable doubt will be fixed by using a registry "cleaner?" If
||| you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would be far
||| better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the specific
||| key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. Why use a
||| shotgun when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally, the manually
||| changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely to have the
||| dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make multiple
||| changes simultaneously.
|||
||| The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
||| the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of
||| the device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in
||| the registry can have severe consequences. One should not even
||| turning loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is
||| fully confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a
||| result of each and every change. Having seen the results of
||| inexperienced people using automated registry "cleaners," I can only
||| advise all but the most experienced computer technicians (and/or
||| hobbyists) to avoid them all. Experience has shown me that such tools
||| simply are not safe in the hands of the inexperienced user.
|||
||| The only thing needed to safely maintain your registry is
||| knowledge and Regedit.exe. If you lack the knowledge and experience
||| to maintain your registry by yourself, then you also lack the
||| knowledge and experience to safely configure and use any automated
||| registry "cleaner," no matter how safe they claim to be.
|||
||| To date, no one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that
||| the use of an automated registry "cleaner," particularly by an
||| untrained, inexperienced computer user, does any real good. There's
||| certainly been no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the
||| use of such products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's
||| performance or stability.