What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

[WizeOne]

I've run across these things from time to time, even run a couple. The ones I've seen always come up with tons of things that need to be dealt with but but I sense that damage could be done if you don't know what you are 'fixing'. They always seem short on advice as to what you should/could safely do.

Are these things valid? Are there cleaners that will find and fix things without worry as to negative affects?

 

[Xcusme]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Well, you can go to this site and read. It's a good call to set your system based on one of the setting.

http://www.blackviper.com/

 

[WizeOne]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Well, you can go to this site and read. It's a good call to set your system based on one of the setting.

http://www.blackviper.com/

Thanks Xcusme, but I am glad you can decipher all that stuff.:redface:

 

[dr_bowtie]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

I never use them...some of my buds swear by them for installing newer driver and making sure all the older drivers are fully gone...

but I always install the new on top of the old and I have never had any issue...

even with the best reg cleaner if you dont know what you're doing for sure you may end up with a non-booting PC...personally I would skip it...

the blackviper link is more for tuning your Services...for optimising your OS to suit your needs...more geared towards power users...

 

[mscher]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

I have found them to end up doing more harm than good.

They will go through and "clean" a certain registry setting, that it thinks is invalid, when in fact, an application needs it, to run properly.

Proper Windows application programming has guidlines and procedures, but nothing is etched in stone. There is a lot of applications that are programmed "sloppy", by API standards, but run just fine.

Unfortunately, many programs are designed as if they were the only one's running on the system.

Tread lightly with registry cleaners, IMO.

 

[SuzukiChopper]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

I'll have to agree with everyone else. There is a chance they'll do harm, but unless they're catching invalid bootup keys (something a good anti-spyware/malware app will do anyways), they really don't do much good. I used one once when fixing a computer and I went through the entries it wanted to remove and I just asked myself "Why?". It may free up a whole whopping 50Kb of space on your hard drive but who cares?

Stick with good antivirus and anti-spyware/malware tools and forget about the registry cleaners.

 

[P3_sailor]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

The free ones are junk. I had a bunch of issues when adobe upgraded to version 10 and the computer was running really slow so I broke down and bought advanced registry doctor online. It found like 600 problems on the 1st scan and fixed them. It will do everything by itself. Most of it was old junk that wasn't there anymore along with some malware. I run anti-malware bytes and norton scans and then run the registry doctor to fully get rid of the registry entries and the computer runs a lot faster than it used to. It still gets issues every now and then but run another scan and it fixes them. It was like $25

 

[ThumbPkr]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

I use Norton Utilities and run it from the cd drive.I would not install it.I have found the "WinDoctor" program to be quite effective in cleaning up the trash that accumulates after time.Ron G

 

[dolluper]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Try CC cleaner they have a registry cleaner also....if you install it uncheck Yahoo toolbar during the install unless you want it...it will clean all the junk files and then you can click on the registry function BUT DO A BACKUP click yes save in my docs....some registry items will reappear when you start up next time ...it's a good safe one and free

 

[WizeOne]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Try CC cleaner they have a registry cleaner also....if you install it uncheck Yahoo toolbar during the install unless you want it...it will clean all the junk files and then you can click on the registry function BUT DO A BACKUP click yes save in my docs....some registry items will reappear when you start up next time ...it's a good safe one and free

I do have that one. I ran 'analyse' and it came up with a bunch of stuff but the 'advanced' item in the left column was greyed out. When I clicked on it I got a lot of warnings re the different elements under 'advanced'. Is there anything to be concerned about there?

I did not do 'run cleaner'. If I select that, is that when I will get a reminder to Backup?

 

[lowkee]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

I have expert knowledge of the registry and, for the most part, know what is safe/unsafe to wipe out and I still rarely use them. When I do use them, I wonder why I even bothered, as they never really speed things up and you are left with a feeling of letting a thief into your house, wondering what was removed.

I'd suggest just using msconfig to remove needless startup items and doing a full reload of your PC if things are getting slow enough to make you wish reg cleaners actually benefitted you.

Living by these two rules has helped me live without a slow PC:

Don't install something you won't use over the long term
This means never install trial-ware or software you haven't researched already. If you are crossing your fingers in hopes a program will do what you want, you are asking for a slow PC. Read reviews, top 10 lists and forums first. You will quickly realize which software does what you want well before running setup.exe.

Buy RAM
When your PC runs out of RAM, it begins to use your hard drive as additional memory. While this is great failover, even the fastest hard drives (which you don't own) are 20 times slower than even crappy RAM. You may have an old, slow PC, but RAM will always benefit you. Better yet, most times RAM can be moved into whatever new PC you buy down the road, so putting in the cash now can benefit you for years to come. $40 can buy you 4GB of RAM, enough to run nearly anything.

I suppose a good 3rd rule is.. only reboot when needed. This is a personal choice, as it means running your PC 24/7, but I have found rebooting only when direly needed seems to keep things snappy. I reboot once every 2-3 months (usually because of driver or MS updates). Windows only becomes unstable over the long term because of the junk we install on it, not because of Windows itself.

 

[madgadget]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Try CC cleaner they have a registry cleaner also....if you install it uncheck Yahoo toolbar during the install unless you want it...it will clean all the junk files and then you can click on the registry function BUT DO A BACKUP click yes save in my docs....some registry items will reappear when you start up next time ...it's a good safe one and free

Yep I second this. Have used this successfully several times now.

 

[dolluper]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Man stay away from the advanced section.....just run the cleaner ,they will ask your permission to delete the JUNK files first AFTER your done that look on the left side you will see Registry...click on that ,then scan for issues,they will load up and each one will have a description on the problem ...you can select all if you want or do it idividually sp....if you hit all ...it will then ask if you want a backup .....say yes as dealing with the registry always do a back up...save in my docs then fix all selected

 

[Boomyal]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Ok, thanks. I did run the cleaner and I greyed out the 'advanced'. That looked a little spooky to play with. When done I did run the Registry cleaner and every thing still works.

 

[gonefishie]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Well, whaddaya know? It's a Boomyal sighting.

I use CCleaner all the times. It won't hurt a thing. I don't clean the registry very often because I don't install/uninstall stuff often but do use the regular cleaning every few days. I use it as soon as I close my browser after a visit to online banking.

 

[dolluper]

Re: What's the skinny on Registry Cleaners?

Hry Boom did you make a back up of the registry before you wiped it....good to see your still kicking around