Utilities question

T wrote:
Even with food? I get an acid stomach if I
drink coffee on an empty stomach. Too much --
or old coffee -- will give me intestinal queasiness.
But I have no problem with food. I drink strong coffee
with every meal. By itself, if I remember correctly,
it's about the same pH as beer: 4.5. That's quite
acidic.




That's pretty close.
Most lager is around 4.5-4.6 --- higher values are more susceptible to
microbial activity
Some specialty beers (including some European brands) can be lower
(some as low as 3.5 - 3.6)

Black Coffee normally tests in the 4.9 to 5.1 range.



--
....winston
msft mvp consumer apps

On 03/25/2015 10:44 AM, "...winston‫" wrote:
T wrote:
Even with food? I get an acid stomach if I
drink coffee on an empty stomach. Too much --
or old coffee -- will give me intestinal queasiness.
But I have no problem with food. I drink strong coffee
with every meal. By itself, if I remember correctly,
it's about the same pH as beer: 4.5. That's quite
acidic.




That's pretty close.
Most lager is around 4.5-4.6 --- higher values are more susceptible to
microbial activity
Some specialty beers (including some European brands) can be lower
(some as low as 3.5 - 3.6)

Black Coffee normally tests in the 4.9 to 5.1 range.


On the horizon is coffee flour. It is the pulp around
the bean that is usually fed to livestock. And it is low
carb and hardly any caffeine

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles...g-coffee-flour

T wrote:
On 03/25/2015 10:44 AM, "...winston‫" wrote:
T wrote:
Even with food? I get an acid stomach if I
drink coffee on an empty stomach. Too much --
or old coffee -- will give me intestinal queasiness.
But I have no problem with food. I drink strong coffee
with every meal. By itself, if I remember correctly,
it's about the same pH as beer: 4.5. That's quite
acidic.




That's pretty close.
Most lager is around 4.5-4.6 --- higher values are more susceptible to
microbial activity
Some specialty beers (including some European brands) can be lower
(some as low as 3.5 - 3.6)

Black Coffee normally tests in the 4.9 to 5.1 range.


On the horizon is coffee flour. It is the pulp around
the bean that is usually fed to livestock. And it is low
carb and hardly any caffeine

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles...g-coffee-flour


Ask yourself what is the pH of your stomach, and why the pH doesn't
matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid

"The pH of gastric acid is 1.5 to 3.5 in the human stomach lumen,
the acidity being maintained by the proton pump H+/K+ ATPase."

And from another article.

"The stomach has to regenerate a new layer of mucus every two weeks,
or else damage to the epithelium may result."

It's possible some other part of the digestive system
is reacting. You have a gall bladder, and if the coffee had
fat in it, maybe that's a source of a reaction.

And the digestive system has to have a connection to the
nervous system, for protection. Otherwise, the digestive
system would not be able to trigger the vomit reaction
when required. When I was "trapped" on a vacation, and
couldn't go anywhere, I ended up reading an entire medical
book about how vomiting worked. The fascinating part, was
how you could have an entire book devoted to the topic.
I don't remember any of the contents, but I read the book
anyway, because no transportation was available where
I was staying (a med student chalet :-) ).

Paul

On 3/25/15 7:31 AM, Mayayana wrote:
| And to be honest, finding the answer isn't that high on my list. The #1
| thing on my list is using a computer, any computer, in a way and manner
| that feels "right", if you know what I mean,

Yes. The ultimate software, or tool, is the one that
works and doesn't get in the way.

I started exploring
computers when I was given a Win3.1 box and spent
an entire evening trying to figure out how to copy
something from a floppy to the Desktop. Silly me, I
thought that would be in the help.

I've got you beat here. My first computer was a loaded Atari 800, and I
still have it in a box. LOL

To some extent the handyman aspect of it is still alluring
to me -- inspiring me to learn through a combination of
two things. On the one hand is empowerment, having
realized that I can adapt this tool to my needs, and that
no one more than Microsoft has made that feasible. (My
first thrill was writing a VBScript message box and realizing
that I can work "on the other side of the screen". Mac,
by contrast, is harder to get at, while Linux doesn't provide
the same range of tools and docs that MS does. The Linux
people are into hazing and dumping people off the deep end
to teach them to swim.)

Very similar here. On the 800, I started a database cross referencing
the individual part numbers used by general aviation aircraft
manufacturers to their standard military part number. The interesting
part was discovering the vast differences in pricing. We discovered one
nut that cost about $2.50 ea. from your generic parts place (similar to
CarQuest, Napa, etc.), but the same nut from Piper was only $ .50.
Guess where the inventory was bought...

The local community college had a 2 quarter course in programming in
Basic. That's where I learned I did not want to be a programmer! LOL
I used my 800 for all of my homework rather than suffering through
having to use the computer lab.

Macs aren't technically based on Linux, it's based on a different
version of Unix. BSD, I think. OS X is developed on Jobs Next
Step/Open Step OS from the NExT computer, from what I've read.

But I agree with your observation about Linux in general. Program
documentation is usually atrocious, IMO, as is any online help forum.
The Usenet Linux groups seem to be more name calling than helpful, so I
do even bother. And MS and Mac are not much better. :-( If you are
new to computers today, you are basically screwed as there seem to be
no books or magazines aimed at the beginner. To me, MS has blown hot
and cold on the Help system. I think the best help they've produced on
the computer comes with Vista and Win7, with 7 being better. 8.X? IMO,
don't waste your time is my impression so far.

So I know no more command line stuff than I need to know to accomplish a
need at a time. Likewise, until a few months ago, I'd never used a
command line program since buying my first Atari computer with a
windowing interface. Then I learned about a program called Curl, and as
far as I know, there's nothing like it with a GUI interface. But that's
another discussion. G

As for printed matter, Apple seems to have nothing, with David Pogue's
book seemingly having the most kudos. I've got his books, but I usually
find the information I'm looking for to be missing.

I have all the Inside Out series from MS starting with XP. But the 8.X
books are a damned disappointment from what little I've used them.

The second motivation is sheer frustration. (I'll be damned
if I'm going to spend another entire evening trying to
accomplish something that should be easy!)

You hit this nail on the head. I've a friend who is constantly
complaining this or that should be easier. Yet, when I tell her to try
X or Y, she won't. What's a feller to do? LOL

I guess
that's the same frustration that leads people to invent
things like storm door closers; a sense that the work will
pay off over time. But over the years I began to realize
that tech in general, and Microsoft in particular, is partially
built on forced obsolescence and manufactured abstruseness.
The storm door design keeps changing for no good reason.
One needs to buy new screwdrivers and learn how to use
them. One needs to take new classes and get new certifications,
as the old screwdrivers are now "deprecated". There's a whole
industry of trumped-up knowledge and teaching jobs built
onto unnecessary change.

I used to feel similar. Atari users were very vehement at times over
new versions of the OS constantly breaking existing software. Finally
realized, if the computers continue to grow and advance in capabilities,
it will have to break old software. You can't program for something
that doesn't exist.

I agree on the abstruse aspect of MS in general. Their texts aren't
really meant for the Average Joe, and I don't think it was ever intended
to be. Apple, on the other hand, seems to understand the Average Joe
better than everyone else.

But everyone misses the mark somewhere. I'm trying to network Windows,
OS X, and Android (I have a Nexus 7 tablet) and have yet to be 100%
successful. None of them have easy to understand and follow
instructions for this.

So now I have a great deal of expertise in something that
will be no more than a memory soon.

| | Fourth, registry defragmentation.
|
| Sysinternals used to have a Registry defragmenter,
| as did Norton Utilities. I don't see it now at the
| Sysinternals site. I don't know why that is.
|
| To use the snake-oil phrase some use to describe registry cleaners...
|
| Let's assume for the sake of discussion that some registry do work, and
| others aren't worth crap. Couldn't we say similar things about registry
| defragmenters?

I wonder. It doesn't seem that it could make all that
much difference. Maybe it was more for Win9x. I don't
know. The only reason I took it seriously was because
Mark Russinovich wrote it. He's a very well regarded
Windows programmer, who originally started Sysinternals,
writing all sorts of low-level utilities that MS *should*
have written and made public.

I know about Sysinternals. When I've collected enough old computer junk
("One man's trash is another man's treasure."), I will assemble a
complete and legal system and then donate it to a local social agency
which then gives it to someone they deem worthy. I installed the boot
time defrag program on the XP machines. The projects are great
practical learning tools, and with each one I did I got better at it. I
rebuilt a couple friend's XP systems, and both reported they were faster
than new. I kinda doubt that, but I've no way of comparing, since I set
the system up differently that what comes from the factory.

I'm now doing my first Vista system, with another to follow, and
learning more stuff that I hope makes the computer accomplish things
faster than the default setup, and does a better job of protecting the
user's data from their own follies.

It's all about the money anymore.

I think, for this discussion, hardware changes hide much of the
advantages of defragmenting, etc. In general, RAM is cheap so
programmers don't have to be good, and with everything being faster,
things are over and done before we can think fast enough. But that
doesn't mean there's no advantage, as I noted earlier.

A few years back Microsoft hired him and bought his
company, continuing the Sysinternals tools to some extent.
Mark Russinovich, meanwhile, became a top programmer
at MS and lectures other programmers. So, if he told me
that a Registry defragmenter was worthwhile I'd believe
him. But... that tool is no longer on his/their website.


| That makes sense, but it's also one of the easiest things
| to test. The speed of Registry reads is astonishing.
| Thousands per second.
|
| How would you go about testing it? I no longer have any Windows systems
| that are likely to be good candidates for testing.
|

The same Sysinternals company used to make Regmon
and Filemon, for monitoring the Registry and the file
system, respectively. They now offer Procmon (Process
Monitor), which combines both. Personally I still prefer
the earlier tools. Procmon was an "improvement" that
just results in more work and complication.

Typical...

In any case, using either Regmon or Procmon one can
watch actions in real time. I open IE and 5,000 Registry
hits are made in about 2 seconds. I change a value in
IE settings, then close the settings window, and another
2,000 hits are made almost instantly. (The Regmon window
just jumps by 2,000. It doesn't scroll. And that speed includes
the time it took for Regmon to gather, organize and display
all that data. I imagine the screen refreshes were probably
what took most of that time.

These are the kinds of utilities I would find interesting, but the
choice of obscure naming of what's going on make them useless to me.
my comments on writing for the Average Joe.

I first noticed all this one time when I was trying to
connect IE security settings to Registry values. With most
software, if you change a setting you might see one or two
Registry writes. With MS software there's a vast obfuscation
factor. MS designs it to be extremely active, either for
thoroughness or obscuration or both. IE writes and rewrites
the same settings, over and over, and also checks the same
settings over and over. Literally thousands of Registry hits
happen in about 1 second. That's why I say that it would
seem very unlikely that any cleaning could improve the speed.
Even on a mediocre Win9x box that speed will still be amazing.

my comment on poor programmers.

That doesn't account for other issues, like outdated
entries wasting time, but I just don't know of a believable
case of that. Registry cleaners mostly clean HKCR\ class
keys and HKCR\CLSID\ GUID keys. Those can refer to
missing COM libraries, but as I detailed in an earlier post,
that makes no difference. Settings for missing files are
very unlikely to be accessed. If they are then there will
be an error, anyway. If the Registry setting was not cleaned
then when software tries to load the COM object it will
fail, because the file is missing. So you'd probably get
something like:

"Error 435. Process cannot create object."

If the Registry setting was cleaned then either you'd
probably get a crash, or if the software was carefully
written it would have checked the Registry for the COM
object it wants to load and show you a message like:

"Unable to continue. Xyz.dll is missing."

The second message is arguably more helpful, but either
way, the file is missing. In the unlikely event that
something tries to load that library there will be a crash
or disabled functionality, whether the Registry entry was
cleaned or not.

The other big category for removal is HKLM\Software\
or HKCU\Software\. Those are settings for installed
programs. Cleaners will often remove settings for
uninstalled software. But those settings do no harm,
and in some cases they'll be useful if software is
reinstalled. For instance, I have a program that I
designed to leave behind activation key data, so
that if someone updates or removes and then re-installs
my software they won't lose their activation key.
Those keys are analogous to the App Data folder. If
you remove Firefox you can save space by going in
and deleting the FF profile folders. On the other hand,
you'll then also lose all of your customization should you
decide to re-install FF. With App Data at least you'd
be saving space. With HKCU\Software\ you're only
going to save a few bytes if you remove software
settings.

I would agree, in general and lack of tech knowledge on my part (LOL),
that the unused entries cause no problem as long as they are not accessed.

My logic is simple speed of having to deal with having them there. Not
using real numbers, let's suppose that those IE accesses you mentioned
take 8 seconds. Then with the unneeded entries removed and the file
defragged, the same accesses now take 5 seconds, the computer feels
faster because you eliminated the extra time it took to get the data.

Probably more than you care to know as a Mac
convert....

Actually, not that much. LOL I like this type of discussion of a
topic, I think everyone benefits to some extent. After finding out
about curl, I started doing a little reading on Terminal and its Unix
commands, and discovered there's not much difference from DOS and
subsequent commands available in Windows. Downright surprising. Is it
more or less powerful than the MS product? I don't know enough about
either one to have an opinion.

But as a coworker said to me a couple days ago, another Mac user I found
out, at least Mac users can say their OS is derived from a 50 year old
OS. MS can't claim that, AFAIK.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 36.0.4
Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:46:02 +0000, Stormin' Norman wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:45:43 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:45:50 +0000, Stormin' Norman wrote:

I'm going to quote one remark of yours and one from the Piriform remarks
that you quoted.

You:

I disagree. The CCleaner registry "cleaner" is not designed to repair registry
issues, but rather it is designed to "clean" the registry. It identifies
entries which are no longer used or associated with software that is no longer
present and allows the user to remove those entries.

The cleaner, to the best of my knowledge, is not designed to identify entries
with incorrect settings and repair those settings. In fact, that would be very
dangerous.

Piriform as quoted by you:

The Registry Cleaner will remove entries for non-existent applications, and
it'll also fix invalid or corrupted entries. You'll probably find your computer
starts much more quickly too!

Thanks! I have no recollection of ever seeing CCLEANER fix invalid or corrupted
entries. If it has done so on any of my systems, then it has been accomplished
perfectly as CCLEANER has never caused any damage to any of the numerous Windows
computers I have owned in my business over the years.

I appreciate the level of scrutiny you afforded to my post, now I have an
appreciation for how the Pope must feel. I am also even more impressed with
CCleaner.

But I have to admit that just because they said it on their site doesn't
mean they actually *do* it...

To tell the truth, I haven't been scrutinizing the Pope all that
closely, so I don't know what you mean about how he must feel :-)


--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:29:27 +0100, FredW wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:55:30 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 19:52:00 +0000, mechanic wrote:

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 21:06:51 +0100, FredW wrote:

works also for 64-bit programs unlike Revo Uninstaller Free

Eh? Revo... seems to work pretty well here on 64bit system.

He didn't say it won't work on a 64-bit system, he said it won't remove
64-bit programs.

That's true on my system (I learned that on Usenet and verified it for
myself) and that's one reason why I usually don't use it.

And that's the reason I switched to GeekUninstaller.
It does uninstall 64-bit programs.

(thank you)

Geek is also what I use these days.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 22:50:33 +0000, Stormin' Norman wrote:

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:46:07 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:46:02 +0000, Stormin' Norman wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:45:43 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:45:50 +0000, Stormin' Norman wrote:

I'm going to quote one remark of yours and one from the Piriform remarks
that you quoted.

You:

I disagree. The CCleaner registry "cleaner" is not designed to repair registry
issues, but rather it is designed to "clean" the registry. It identifies
entries which are no longer used or associated with software that is no longer
present and allows the user to remove those entries.

The cleaner, to the best of my knowledge, is not designed to identify entries
with incorrect settings and repair those settings. In fact, that would be very
dangerous.

Piriform as quoted by you:

The Registry Cleaner will remove entries for non-existent applications, and
it'll also fix invalid or corrupted entries. You'll probably find your computer
starts much more quickly too!

Thanks! I have no recollection of ever seeing CCLEANER fix invalid or corrupted
entries. If it has done so on any of my systems, then it has been accomplished
perfectly as CCLEANER has never caused any damage to any of the numerous Windows
computers I have owned in my business over the years.

I appreciate the level of scrutiny you afforded to my post, now I have an
appreciation for how the Pope must feel. I am also even more impressed with
CCleaner.

But I have to admit that just because they said it on their site doesn't
mean they actually *do* it...

To tell the truth, I haven't been scrutinizing the Pope all that
closely, so I don't know what you mean about how he must feel :-)

You know, the Pope also has a devoted following hanging on his every
word........... ;-)

LOL!

So far, I think I respect Pope Francis.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Stormin' Norman wrote on 3/25/2015 7:35 PM:

With the exceptions of the Pope appearing to be a hard core anti-capitalist


Hmmm...just like J.C.!!

Stormin' Norman wrote on 3/25/2015 8:40 PM:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 19:45:52 -0400, Alek wrote:

Stormin' Norman wrote on 3/25/2015 7:35 PM:

With the exceptions of the Pope appearing to be a hard core anti-capitalist


Hmmm...just like J.C.!!


No, I am pretty sure Julius Caesar would have been capitalist if not a
fascist..... ;-)


Funny.

On 3/25/2015 11:02 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 03:05:35 -0400, Al Drake
wrote:

What exactly is bad about their reg cleaner? Exactly? I know there are
so many registry cleaners that make claims they are a cure all that
everyone says to stay clear of them all. CCleaner has one included and
if you simply back up your registry then what's the problem? What's the
worst that could happen that one can't be prepared for from the start?


The worst that could happen with *any* registry cleaner is that using
it leaves your system unbootable.

Yes, it's less likely with CCleaner than with most other registry
cleaners, but the risk is not zero.

In response to the replies I would recommend reading more about bloated
registries related to cleaners. One can spend much time reading the pros
and cons and in the end it's a matter of what you choose to believe and
who. Everyone knows over time the system gets slower and more bogged
down and no matter what you do sometimes you can never return it to the
speed it has after the clean install. I believe good registry hygiene is
part of the solution. The same as removing temp files and trying to save
drive space when drives are so huge these days it's of little
consequence some people still can't rest unless their system is clean I
guess.

Al Drake wrote:
On 3/25/2015 11:02 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 03:05:35 -0400, Al Drake
wrote:

What exactly is bad about their reg cleaner? Exactly? I know there
are
so many registry cleaners that make claims they are a cure all that
everyone says to stay clear of them all. CCleaner has one included and
if you simply back up your registry then what's the problem? What's the
worst that could happen that one can't be prepared for from the start?


The worst that could happen with *any* registry cleaner is that using
it leaves your system unbootable.

Yes, it's less likely with CCleaner than with most other registry
cleaners, but the risk is not zero.

In response to the replies I would recommend reading more about bloated
registries related to cleaners. One can spend much time reading the pros
and cons and in the end it's a matter of what you choose to believe and
who. Everyone knows over time the system gets slower and more bogged
down and no matter what you do sometimes you can never return it to the
speed it has after the clean install. I believe good registry hygiene is
part of the solution. The same as removing temp files and trying to save
drive space when drives are so huge these days it's of little
consequence some people still can't rest unless their system is clean I
guess.

Use your critical eye, and have a look at this.

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/...s-to-the-test/

What stands out to me, is jv16 (for some reason), has managed
to chop exactly 2 seconds off each of three metrics. While
at the same time, the registry is 5MB bigger than the baseline
condition. Which means something other than the registry
is at play. I wonder what that would be ?

Notice for the bottom four lines, there is hardly any difference
in registry file size. Even though the cleaners have done their
best to clean "orphan" entries out of the registry, it's
still 4 to 5MB larger than it used to be. I guess the cleaner
must be removing the "tiny" reg entries ? :-) You know, when it
finds "27,000 problems" :-)

Paul

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 22:07:36 +0100, in alt.windows7.general you
wrote:

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 19:52:00 +0000, mechanic
wrote:

On Mon, 23 Mar 2015 21:06:51 +0100, FredW wrote:

works also for 64-bit programs unlike Revo Uninstaller Free

Eh? Revo... seems to work pretty well here on 64bit system.

http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_..._download.html
Freewa No full 64-bit compatibility

http://www.downloadx64.com/ccleaner/

On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:29:27 +0100, FredW wrote:

He didn't say it won't work on a 64-bit system, he said it won't remove
64-bit programs.

That's true on my system (I learned that on Usenet and verified it for
myself) and that's one reason why I usually don't use it.

And that's the reason I switched to GeekUninstaller.
It does uninstall 64-bit programs.

"In addition, CCleaner works good on both Windows 32-bit and 64-bit
operating systems, including Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit
and Windows 7 64-bit and of course all Windows 32-bit operating
systems."
- quote from http://www.downloadx64.com/ccleaner/

| Everyone knows over time the system gets slower and more bogged
| down and no matter what you do sometimes you can never return it to the
| speed it has after the clean install. I believe good registry hygiene is
| part of the solution.

There's no reason to *believe* anything. If you
back up then it usually won't do any harm to use
a Reg. cleaner, but to people who think it helps I'd
ask what else they've tried. Far more important
is to weed out unnecessary services, wean oneself
off of AV and "malware hunter" bloatware, stop
unnecessary auto-updating, and eliminate unnecessary
startup programs. Virtually every computer I look at
has junk browser add-ons and nonsense set to run
at startup, from the likes of Verizon, Apple or HP, none
of which has any business putting software in startup.
It's difficult to prevent that if people don't understand
the situation. (My ATI graphic chip software was set
to load by default. It's a bloated mess of .Net -- the only
..Net junk I have -- and it's designed to load at startup
just in case I want to calibrate my monitor! If I didn't know
about that I'd be having the ATI software, along with the
..Net Framework, all loaded into RAM all the time, for no
reason. That's just one example of a situation that
repeats a dozen or more times on most machines.)

Another, increasingly common issue is constant
backup. Suddenly people think they need constant
backup of their system, as though the Western world
might collapse if a lightning strike suddenly took out
the letter they're currently writing. So they have another
big program running that constantly updates a "disk
image".

It's not unusual to see people with AV and Malwarebytes,
at the least, set to scan all files that are touched, over
and over again, while something like Acronis does a
constant backup; Windows and other programs are
going online willy nilly to get updates; wasteful services
like indexing are running in the background; browser
toolbars and software are calling home; meanwhile
Win7 is so bloated it takes about 1 GB RAM just to sit
there. If all of those things haven't been looked at first
then Reg. cleaning is not only useless, it's also misleading.
It's hanging the scented pine tree on your rearview
mirror while you haven't had an oil change in 10,000
miles.

On 3/26/15 2:33 AM, Paul wrote:
Al Drake wrote:
On 3/25/2015 11:02 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015 03:05:35 -0400, Al Drake
wrote:

What exactly is bad about their reg cleaner? Exactly? I know there
are
so many registry cleaners that make claims they are a cure all that
everyone says to stay clear of them all. CCleaner has one included and
if you simply back up your registry then what's the problem? What's the
worst that could happen that one can't be prepared for from the start?


The worst that could happen with *any* registry cleaner is that using
it leaves your system unbootable.

Yes, it's less likely with CCleaner than with most other registry
cleaners, but the risk is not zero.

In response to the replies I would recommend reading more about bloated
registries related to cleaners. One can spend much time reading the pros
and cons and in the end it's a matter of what you choose to believe and
who. Everyone knows over time the system gets slower and more bogged
down and no matter what you do sometimes you can never return it to the
speed it has after the clean install. I believe good registry hygiene is
part of the solution. The same as removing temp files and trying to save
drive space when drives are so huge these days it's of little
consequence some people still can't rest unless their system is clean I
guess.

Use your critical eye, and have a look at this.

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/...s-to-the-test/

What stands out to me, is jv16 (for some reason), has managed
to chop exactly 2 seconds off each of three metrics. While
at the same time, the registry is 5MB bigger than the baseline
condition. Which means something other than the registry
is at play. I wonder what that would be ?

Notice for the bottom four lines, there is hardly any difference
in registry file size. Even though the cleaners have done their
best to clean "orphan" entries out of the registry, it's
still 4 to 5MB larger than it used to be. I guess the cleaner
must be removing the "tiny" reg entries ? :-) You know, when it
finds "27,000 problems" :-)

Nice link, Paul. Thanks.

Using said critical eye, however... LOL

As soon as I saw "Virtual Box", the article became less than 100%
accurate for me, and maybe a little less reliable. Why? I have VM
software here, and not a single OS install operates *exactly* the same
as it does in real life. So how can we expect any results from a test
such as this to accurately produce the results. Are his results correct
in a general sense? Probably. But it's no guarantee the results would
be the same a real system used as a test bed.

This in turn makes me wonder... Why didn't he just create and reinstall
system images?

Next, he only tests 2 of how many registry cleaners out there? Hardly a
representative sample.

Third, how do we know that a certain percentage of the cleaning programs
simply run MS's own tools in the background, and provide the user with
more information and options that MS does?

So, I went to MS and checked on Disk Cleanup/cleanmgr.exe. I selected
Windows 7 as the operating system for the search. Which brought up this
article:

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/253597/en-us "Automating Disk
Cleanup Tool in Windows". In and of itself, the article seems quite
revealing when you read with the "critical eye". LOL

The 2nd sentence in the article says "This article applies to Windows
2000". This says to me there's no basic changes to the Disk Cleanup
system since 2000, other than to make it operated under newer versions
of Windows. The newest OS listed in the area of what the article
applies to is Win7. But since the last update of the article is
12/17/12, I will stipulate it probably applies to Win 8.X also.

The other interesting statement I found is this: "You can start the
Disk Cleanup tool by running Cleanmgr.exe, or by clicking Start,
pointing to Programs, pointing to Accessories, pointing to System Tools,
and then clicking Disk Cleanup." This sentence says to me there is no
difference between running the GUI interface or the command line
interface. I don't have a Win7 up and running at the moment, but it
would be interesting to compare the switches listed in the article to
the list of options in the GUI. I'm betting they are the same. :-)

It seems the moral of this story is, if you really want to clean your
computer of all the "junk", do a clean install in some way. Personally,
I'd have a system image or two sitting around somewhere. G


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
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Thunderbird 31.5
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"