Registry cleaner ?

In ,
Bruce Chambers typed:
Steve Hayes wrote:


So how should you clean the registry, then?




And the correct answer to that question is: "You shouldn't." There's
no sound technical reason for doing so, but abundant technical reasons
for *not* doing so.

He asked HOW, dummy! Also:

You typo'd: There ARE sound technical reasons for doing so, and abundant
technical reasons that the problem most likely lies elsewhere also. But as
usual, your are completely wrong and missed the chance for a good response.

HTH,

Twayne

In ,
thanatoid typed:
Steve Hayes wrote in
:

On Sat, 9 Jan 2010 18:58:53 -0500, "Daave"
wrote:

Steve Hayes wrote:
On Thu, 7 Jan 2010 23:28:46 -0500, "David H. Lipman"
wrote:

You don't. There is no need to clean the Registry. It
is a myth to sell snake oil. Very often these so-called
Registry Cleaners are malware.

(Still waiting for an example, David.)

SNIP

I thoguht that in this ng, unless otherwise stated, that
WERE talking about Windows XP operating system.

And if I reinstall the software, will it just overwrite the
old entries, so that they don't interfere with the new
installation?

/Very/ good question. Let's see all the people who enjoy
hoarding old registry entries answer that one. Let's specify
"reinstall" and "overwrite" to mean that a newer version of the
same program is being installed, or a /similar/ program which
handles the same types of files.

(If you are reinstalling the /identical/ version of the same
program you had before, the worst that may happen is that you
may end up with old settings you don't want any more or that you
may end up with new settings you didn't want, depending on how
bad the install routine is written. Either way you will have to
do some work.)

Nah, just export the whole registry from regedit, then import the whole
registry.
NO DON'T! At least not unless it's a sandbox machineg.

HTH,

Twayne

"Twayne" wrote in
:

In ,
thanatoid typed:

SNIP

JV16 does an amazing job and tells you exactly WHY
something "can go" and it's up to you, It also makes
backups - which I have NEVER needed to use.

Generally, after using my 4 reg cleaners (I only do it
once in a while, like before making an image of C I DO
manually clean stuff because NOTHING will do EVERYTHING.

The reg cleaners just make the job faster and more
thorough since they will look through everything, like the
entire HKCR tree, something I have NO patience for.

I'll buy that; it's one step further than I go, but it
doesn't hurt anything as long as you know what you're
doing, which you do or you wouldn't be online G . Well,
I also only use one cleaner too, but I do have three I keep
available just in case.
You did well, brain-farted sentence and all! :^}

Sometimes I sign my posts thanafart ;-) ...

--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

"Twayne" wrote in
:

In ,
thanatoid typed:

SNIP

JV16 does an amazing job and tells you exactly WHY
something "can go" and it's up to you, It also makes
backups - which I have NEVER needed to use.

Generally, after using my 4 reg cleaners (I only do it
once in a while, like before making an image of C I DO
manually clean stuff because NOTHING will do EVERYTHING.

The reg cleaners just make the job faster and more
thorough since they will look through everything, like the
entire HKCR tree, something I have NO patience for.

I'll buy that; it's one step further than I go, but it
doesn't hurt anything as long as you know what you're
doing, which you do or you wouldn't be online G . Well,
I also only use one cleaner too, but I do have three I keep
available just in case.
You did well, brain-farted sentence and all! :^}

Sometimes I sign my posts thanafart ;-) ...

--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

"Daave" wrote in
:

SNIP

http://www.411-spyware.com/remove-registrycleanerpro

That's a description of why it's "bad".

The /program/ is he

http://www.ixitools.com/products/

And for malware, it sure has a lot of five star ratings from
software sites - of course, they could be fake. I sure am not
impressed by the fact they also have a "driver updater" and
"driver backuper". Driver utilities are such bull****.

As always, the bottom line is the user... I scan my security
programs with ESET NOD32 just like I scan any and every other
thing that wasn't on my computer before the last online session.

--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

John John - MVP wrote in
:

SNIP

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems
brought about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any
help, you simply disappear.

OK, I'm not Twayne, so let /me/ see an example of "damage" done
by a reg cleaner. I'm new to the XP groups and I have not seen
one yet. In my pro-reg cleaners posts I HAVE asked for
examples/links/whatever, and received silence or insults or
both, but not a single specific example.

(As for trusting MS to fully remove Office - pretty funny. It
gets my vote for Joke of the Week. I thought your line would be
"Once installed, it becomes an integral part of they system,
like Internet Explorer is to begin with, and can't be removed" -
which of course is not true either.)


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

John John - MVP wrote in
:

SNIP

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems
brought about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any
help, you simply disappear.

OK, I'm not Twayne, so let /me/ see an example of "damage" done
by a reg cleaner. I'm new to the XP groups and I have not seen
one yet. In my pro-reg cleaners posts I HAVE asked for
examples/links/whatever, and received silence or insults or
both, but not a single specific example.

(As for trusting MS to fully remove Office - pretty funny. It
gets my vote for Joke of the Week. I thought your line would be
"Once installed, it becomes an integral part of they system,
like Internet Explorer is to begin with, and can't be removed" -
which of course is not true either.)


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

thanatoid wrote:
John John - MVP wrote in
:

SNIP

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems
brought about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any
help, you simply disappear.

OK, I'm not Twayne, so let /me/ see an example of "damage" done
by a reg cleaner. I'm new to the XP groups and I have not seen
one yet.

I have provided links to the kind of problems that these cleaners can
cause in another post.

At one time I too thought that these cleaners served a purpose. Why?
Because I didn't know any better, everybody was spreading the same
gospel and I believed the vendors of these programs. That was when I
was using Windows 95 on my home machine. I knew next to nothing about
Windows and like everybody else I ran these cleaners just because that's
what folks were doing, I never noticed any improvement when running them
but I ran the cleaners anyway.

After we migrated our work network from Novell over DOS to an NT4
network I thought that I should also run registry cleaners on my NT4
boxes. It didn't take too long for me to realize that the cleaners did
absolutely nothing to improve performance on any of our machines and
that it broke some of our applications. One of my boxes was up to
MFC42.dll but a Xerox printer that we had attached to the box couldn't
work with that MFC version, it required MFC40.dll so this dll was kept
and registered on the NT4 box. Every time a cleaner was run it would
remove the registration for this file and the whole Xerox software would
fall apart and the printer would stop working. That was the last straw,
these cleaners did absolutely nothing to maintain the health of my
machines and they did nothing to improve performance, quite to the
contrary they were breaking our software. By that time I was a bit more
savvy about Windows NT and I came to realize that these cleaners were
really utterly useless and that they were causing more harm than good so
I dumped the whole lot of them. And, oh yes, I tried more than a few or
them, RegClean, CleanSweep, RegCleaner/JV16 and a few others. There all
the same, they're all utterly useless and a complete waste of time,
Windows NT operating systems don't need registry cleaning, running these
cleaners as a maintenance/prevention routine is nothing but a fool's errand.

John

thanatoid wrote:
John John - MVP wrote in
:

SNIP

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems
brought about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any
help, you simply disappear.

OK, I'm not Twayne, so let /me/ see an example of "damage" done
by a reg cleaner. I'm new to the XP groups and I have not seen
one yet.

I have provided links to the kind of problems that these cleaners can
cause in another post.

At one time I too thought that these cleaners served a purpose. Why?
Because I didn't know any better, everybody was spreading the same
gospel and I believed the vendors of these programs. That was when I
was using Windows 95 on my home machine. I knew next to nothing about
Windows and like everybody else I ran these cleaners just because that's
what folks were doing, I never noticed any improvement when running them
but I ran the cleaners anyway.

After we migrated our work network from Novell over DOS to an NT4
network I thought that I should also run registry cleaners on my NT4
boxes. It didn't take too long for me to realize that the cleaners did
absolutely nothing to improve performance on any of our machines and
that it broke some of our applications. One of my boxes was up to
MFC42.dll but a Xerox printer that we had attached to the box couldn't
work with that MFC version, it required MFC40.dll so this dll was kept
and registered on the NT4 box. Every time a cleaner was run it would
remove the registration for this file and the whole Xerox software would
fall apart and the printer would stop working. That was the last straw,
these cleaners did absolutely nothing to maintain the health of my
machines and they did nothing to improve performance, quite to the
contrary they were breaking our software. By that time I was a bit more
savvy about Windows NT and I came to realize that these cleaners were
really utterly useless and that they were causing more harm than good so
I dumped the whole lot of them. And, oh yes, I tried more than a few or
them, RegClean, CleanSweep, RegCleaner/JV16 and a few others. There all
the same, they're all utterly useless and a complete waste of time,
Windows NT operating systems don't need registry cleaning, running these
cleaners as a maintenance/prevention routine is nothing but a fool's errand.

John

John John - MVP wrote in
:

thanatoid wrote:
OK, I'm not Twayne, so let /me/ see an example of "damage"
done by a reg cleaner. I'm new to the XP groups and I have
not seen one yet.

I have provided links to the kind of problems that these
cleaners can cause in another post.

GREAT ANSWER! I'd make an MVP joke but they teach you this kind
of **** in /all/ corporations and political organizations. Can't
be a good businessman or politician without knowing the
tricks...

But WTH, I'll bite /one more time/... Let's have the Message ID
of that post...

At one time I too thought that these cleaners served a
purpose.

They DO serve a purpose. You may not agree with that purpose,
but that does not mean they are useless to other people or
harmful in general. BION, some people find Rover and Clippy kind
of annoying, but MS thought it was GREAT idea. BOB2, anyone?
Different strokes for different folks.

Why? Because I didn't know any better, everybody
was spreading the same gospel and I believed the vendors of
these programs. That was when I was using Windows 95 on my
home machine. I knew next to nothing about Windows and
like everybody else I ran these cleaners just because
that's what folks were doing, I never noticed any
improvement when running them but I ran the cleaners
anyway.

How many times do I have to repeat that they make NO difference
in performance but have other advantages? Are you brain dead or
somethihng?

After we migrated our work network from Novell over DOS to
an NT4 network I thought that I should also run registry
cleaners on my NT4 boxes. It didn't take too long for me
to realize that the cleaners did absolutely nothing to
improve performance

See above. S I G H.

on any of our machines and that it
broke some of our applications.

I don't suppose there is any point in asking WHAT applications
they "broke" and HOW, is there?

One of my boxes was up to
MFC42.dll but a Xerox printer that we had attached to the
box couldn't work with that MFC version, it required
MFC40.dll so this dll was kept and registered on the NT4
box. Every time a cleaner was run it would remove the
registration for this file and the whole Xerox software
would fall apart and the printer would stop working.

Finally, an actual example! (Just one, and a lousy one at that -
read on - but it's more than you provided so far.) Except I
don't know if the event classifies as "breaking an application",
let alone the famous "made my machine unbootable" claim. Printer
problems are notorious, and Xerox made/makes the best copiers
but their printers and software were never very good.

In any case, what you tell makes absolutely no sense. I run 98SE
99% of the time, and I just checked my registry. The only two
places MFC4x.dll's are mentioned is "windows installer
components" and "shared DLL's". No good reg cleaner would go
anywhere near those branches let alone remove either of those
entries. Not my fault you choose bad software - but then again
being on the MS bandwagon, it must be automatic.

Also, you always get a list of exactly WHAT the reg cleaner
intends to do and it is up to YOU to tell it "OK" or to uncheck
some items. I don't blindly let mine run while I'm doing
something else in another part of the house.

As always, the USER is the bottom line. If you are too lazy/dumb
to see a bad reg cleaner wants to remove an essential link/reg
of a crucial system file, that's YOUR fault, not the cleaner's.

That
was the last straw, these cleaners did absolutely nothing
to maintain the health of my machines and they did nothing
to improve performance

Again...

quite to the contrary they were
breaking our software. By that time I was a bit more savvy
about Windows NT and I came to realize that these cleaners
were really utterly useless and that they were causing more
harm than good so I dumped the whole lot of them.

I'll say that you MS folk sure are good at repeating yourselves
over and over... Not unlike "I provided that info in another
post"...

And, oh
yes, I tried more than a few or them, RegClean, CleanSweep,
RegCleaner/JV16 and a few others. There all the same,
they're all utterly useless and a complete waste of time,

Yes, you said that about 30 times by now in your posts.

Windows NT operating systems don't need registry cleaning,

No system NEEDS registry cleaning (unless the registry has been
bloating for 5 years and there is not enough disk space for
Windows to even run properly) but some people find what they do
useful.

running these cleaners as a maintenance/prevention routine
is nothing but a fool's errand.

No one besides me will ever touch my computer, but when I need
to make an Acronis C:\ image or just feel it's time to clean up
the system, I do a variety of things, including running 4 reg
cleaners and then doing a final manual check/sweep. There is no
reason for it - I like to do it because I like to keep things
neat and compact. There is no known reason for why some people
put their left shoe on first instead of the right one. Hey, I've
known people who sometimes put their left shoe on first and
sometimes the right!

Anyway, WHY are you so adamant about this? Are you afraid to
admit the registry was a TERRIBLE idea and that it bloats
continuously and keeps crap that shouldn't be in it (get a file
viewer capable of loading/viewing the registry files "au
naturel" and see what kinds of goodies are dumped all over it -
after all, MS are SO good at programming), and generally makes
what was once a simple thing of editing an ini file an utter
nightmare which requires special software to be dealt with?


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

SOUND technical reasons?????? Just give one. And prove it to be so.
"Twayne" wrote in message
...
In ,
Bruce Chambers typed:
Steve Hayes wrote:


So how should you clean the registry, then?




And the correct answer to that question is: "You shouldn't." There's
no sound technical reason for doing so, but abundant technical reasons
for *not* doing so.

He asked HOW, dummy! Also:

You typo'd: There ARE sound technical reasons for doing so, and abundant
technical reasons that the problem most likely lies elsewhere also. But as
usual, your are completely wrong and missed the chance for a good
response.

HTH,

Twayne

SOUND technical reasons?????? Just give one. And prove it to be so.
"Twayne" wrote in message
...
In ,
Bruce Chambers typed:
Steve Hayes wrote:


So how should you clean the registry, then?




And the correct answer to that question is: "You shouldn't." There's
no sound technical reason for doing so, but abundant technical reasons
for *not* doing so.

He asked HOW, dummy! Also:

You typo'd: There ARE sound technical reasons for doing so, and abundant
technical reasons that the problem most likely lies elsewhere also. But as
usual, your are completely wrong and missed the chance for a good
response.

HTH,

Twayne

Not ONCE have you responded to someone who damaged their system using a
registry cleaner.
"Twayne" wrote in message
...
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Twayne wrote:
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Twayne wrote:
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Don't bother with these utterly useless registry cleaners, they
cause more harm than good.

Completely untrue. Posted from ignorance and to be a gopher for a
small group of registry cleaner libelists. Like any other program,
just source a reliable program from a reliable web site. They don't
do any
harm or damage and they also allow you to undo any changes you make
anyway.

As usual and in your true form when ever these useless programs are
exposed for what they are you are here to defend your beloved
cleaners and to insult all who disagree with you. However, when
people post seeking help with real problems caused by these
cleaners you are nowhere to been seen. Most of us here have
noticed that when it comes to posts about registry cleaners you
have a case of selected blindness, and when you do reply to posts
you usually leave your brains and manners parked somewhere else.

John

Wrong.

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems brought
about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any help, you simply
disappear. It's so blatant, you are there defending your cleaners 5
minutes earlier but as soon as someone has problems you go blind and
see nothing. Who are you really trying to kid?

John

Aha, that's an exact description of YOUR MO! You'll find I either: Offer
an answer to at minimum tell the poster that you are all wet and not to be
taken seriously.


HTH,

Twayne

Not ONCE have you responded to someone who damaged their system using a
registry cleaner.
"Twayne" wrote in message
...
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Twayne wrote:
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Twayne wrote:
In ,
John John - MVP typed:
Don't bother with these utterly useless registry cleaners, they
cause more harm than good.

Completely untrue. Posted from ignorance and to be a gopher for a
small group of registry cleaner libelists. Like any other program,
just source a reliable program from a reliable web site. They don't
do any
harm or damage and they also allow you to undo any changes you make
anyway.

As usual and in your true form when ever these useless programs are
exposed for what they are you are here to defend your beloved
cleaners and to insult all who disagree with you. However, when
people post seeking help with real problems caused by these
cleaners you are nowhere to been seen. Most of us here have
noticed that when it comes to posts about registry cleaners you
have a case of selected blindness, and when you do reply to posts
you usually leave your brains and manners parked somewhere else.

John

Wrong.

No, we have all noticed it. When people post with problems brought
about by registry cleaners you *never* offer any help, you simply
disappear. It's so blatant, you are there defending your cleaners 5
minutes earlier but as soon as someone has problems you go blind and
see nothing. Who are you really trying to kid?

John

Aha, that's an exact description of YOUR MO! You'll find I either: Offer
an answer to at minimum tell the poster that you are all wet and not to be
taken seriously.


HTH,

Twayne

On the contrary, YOU"RE the one exposed many times for pushing registry
cleaners.
To quote you, 'you're wrong now, always have been and always will be.'
Not one MVP on this newsgroup will refute that.

"Twayne" wrote in message
...
Ahh, the original intentionally ignorant misinformationist! Just looking
for a chance to make your moronic spiel, eh? You've been exposed so many
times I don't think it's even necessary to go through it all again. You're
wrong now, always have been, and always will be. Your advice here is
complete "snake-oil" by definition.

HTH,

Twayne






In ,
Bruce Chambers typed:
Jackson wrote:
Kim Komando's tip of the day (07 Jan) has good words for
Microcraft's jv Power tools for cleaning the registry. I
believe it's freeware.

Has anyone used this program? Do you have any remarks or
recomendations?
Jack from Taxacola (formerly Pensacola), FL


Why would you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry?
What specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some
program's bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can 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. After
all, why use a chainsaw 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 only thing needed to
safely clean your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.

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 repeatedly 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. 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.

More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
automated registry "cleaner," particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good, whatsoever. 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. Given the potential for harm, it's just not
worth the risk.

Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's
no real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
non-existent benefits.

I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to
make any changes automatically. But I really don't think that there
are any registry "cleaners" that are truly safe for the general
public to use. Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools
simply are not safe in the hands of the inexperienced user.

A little further reading on the subject:

Why I don't use registry cleaners
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643

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Cleaner?
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