Registry Cleaners

"Bill Ridgeway" wrote in message
...
Ken Blake wrote (in response to another thread) -
Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the registry
isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any
registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of
registry cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit it
may
have.

I would agree with the warning of the possibility of (serious) damage to
the
Registry and the consequence that the computer may not boot up. I would
also agree that it may not be necessary to clean the Registry very
regularly. However, the Registry does become bloated with calls to
uninstalled software which does increase the time needed to boot up - at
the
very least. However, the additional space requirement of a bloated
Registry
may not be significant. I would suggest, say, an annual tidy-up.

I have used two Registry cleaners over the years (Max Registry Cleaner and
Registry Mechanic) both without any problem. Mind you, my backup system
includes a cloned hard disk drive and separate copy of all key files (as
at
the previous day). I have recently proved that I can get a system with a
failed hard disk drive up and running in the time it takes to swap a hard
disk, copy key files and update Windows and NIS: About 30 minutes.

Bill Ridgeway



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.

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..

--

Mike Hall - MVP Windows Experience
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/