Registry Cleaners

[jfunk]

Does anyone have experience with registry cleaners? Do they perform a real service or are they just a waste of time and money and add more clutter to your machine?

[PCC-Richard]

Hey,

I've never used one.. but I tend to be horrible at computer maintainance. I just reformat every 3 months. :rofl

[cyoung1]

They work magic I think... See me and i'll get you hooked up. (I'm at school now, PM me your email addy)

[MaxMercury]

Hey Caleb,

By the way, not meaning to stray off-topic, but I like your handle. Are you a baseball fan? Your handle makes me think of a certain famous pitcher. ;-)

-- Max

[mlbpro417]

By the way, not meaning to stray off-topic, but I like your handle. Are you a baseball fan? Your handle makes me think of a certain famous pitcher. ;-)

-- Max

I agree...A pitcher, a pretty good one if I recall. Also, I have used Window washer by Webroot and its a very effective registry cleaning tool. Well, I think its a registry thing but it basically "washes" out your unneeded files like temporary files and such. My friend used it and it cleaned 1 GB of space!! The bad news is its not free.

[cyoung1]

Yes I am a baseball fan. :) But my name is Caleb Young LOL.

I use "Registry Mechanic" by WinGuides. I use that program along with "Ad-Aware" "Spybot" "System Detective" and "xcleaner."

Once I complete all those scans along with Norton and clean up my start up. (msconfig) my computer runs great.

Another link you should try is

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

I complete all the steps on that website and omg my computer is flying for being 3 years old.

[MaxMercury]

I decided to resurrect this thread because of my participation in the "Problem With Outlook 2003" thread, where there's been a lot of discussion about possible Windows registry corruption. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't want people reading that thread to get nervous and feel that they had to download or buy a so-called registry cleaner.

I no longer remember why I didn't post my own experiences with registry cleaners when this thread was originally started. Perhaps lack of time. Sorry. :-(

Anyway, I'll describe a bit of my own experience now.

I get asked about registry cleaners a lot, and I've tested many. I haven't found one yet that I can recommend, so I suggest that people use them with caution and always make a back up of the registry if the program doesn't automatically do so. I also recommend setting a system restore point before using such programs.

The problem I've frequently encountered is that many registry cleaners incorrectly identify some files and registry keys as safe to delete that really aren't. I'm very familiar with the registry, so I can spot things like that, but most users I encounter who run these programs and then have problems know next to nothing about the registry and simply trust the program. Too often, I've seen these programs do more harm than good. Personally, I haven't found that the risks justify the benefits for most users, and I haven't even found convincing evidence that such programs improve system performance.

Also in the "Outlook" thread, I'd mentioned that I'd used the command "regedit." Well, please don't use that command and poke around in the registry unless you're very experienced.

There are strategies for optimizing the registry safely. One is outlined well in a recent article over at ABXZone. Basically, I share the author's attitude toward fiddling around with the registry. Here's the link:

How to Safely Compact, Backup and Defragment your Registry (http://www.abxzone.com/abx_reviews/al/registry.html)

Note that the programs recommended are not cleaners.

Now, I realize that many of you may use registry cleaners and like them. That's perfectly fine, i.e. whatever you feel comfortable with. With this post, my intent was simply to write a cautionary note. It represents simply my own opinion based on experience. Please feel free to disagree with me. :)

-- Max

[TheMattrix]

My favorite registry optimizer is NTREGOPT (http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/). Very simple to use and quite speedy. :-D

[MaxMercury]

Hey Mattrix,
Nice to see you around again! :-)

Yeah, NTREGOPT is one of the programs I use as well, and it's one of the programs recommended in the article at ABXZone. TheMattrix -- thanks for actually naming it and posting a link to it. The developer of the program describes it as an optimizer as opposed to a cleaner. All it does is delete blank spaces within the registry. It doesn't delete anything else.

-- Max

[TheMattrix]

Good to be back :thumbsup

Yeah, it's really for optimizing, I suppose. My favorite registry cleaner for Windows XP would probably have to be RegScrubXP (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2048).