Registry 'Cleaners'

[justinlee]

I am interested to hear other people's opinions on these so-called 'Registry Cleaners' I have been using CCleaner for some time but since re-installing Windows i now only use the Windows/Applications cleaner option and stay well away from the Registry cleaning tool. Yes,  i have used the Reg cleaning option in the past and had no problems with it, but i have heard from the Tech guys on Microsoft forums that there is actually no need to use Reg Cleaners as Windows does a good enough job of dealing with the Registry itself. In fact, i would go as far to say as the 'Registry Cleaners' do nothing whatsoever in helping to speed your system up and are in fact totally unnecessary and most of them will end up doing more harm than good.

What do you think?

[CraigB]

Generally i would recommend the if a user does not understand registries then they should not go near them but at the same time ccleaner does not go very deep into the registry and iv never seen it take out some thing that it shouldn't, a lite registry clean with ccleaner isnt going to do any damage imo but it also wont really make any difference to the performance of your system as its registry cleaning is not thorough enough.
Eusing free registry cleaner goes a little deeper and iv found this one to be very safe as well and will declutter the registry without destoying anything it shouldn't.
My best preferance for myself is to manually search and clean my registries but as i mentioned earlyer this is not for people who dont understand what there looking at in the registry.

[OrangeCrate]

I am interested to hear other people's opinions on these so-called 'Registry Cleaners' I have been using CCleaner for some time but since re-installing Windows i now only use the Windows/Applications cleaner option and stay well away from the Registry cleaning tool. Yes,  i have used the Reg cleaning option in the past and had no problems with it, but i have heard from the Tech guys on Microsoft forums that there is actually no need to use Reg Cleaners as Windows does a good enough job of dealing with the Registry itself. In fact, i would go as far to say as the 'Registry Cleaners' do nothing whatsoever in helping to speed your system up and are in fact totally unnecessary and most of them will end up doing more harm than good.

What do you think?

Didn't you just ask this question here?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=79439.msg653371#msg653371

[justinlee]

Didn't you just ask this question here?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=79439.msg653371#msg653371

No, that was relating to whether it was safe to delete a specific reg key. This question is about reg cleaners in general.

[OrangeCrate]

Didn't you just ask this question here?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=79439.msg653371#msg653371

No, that was relating to whether it was safe to delete a specific reg key. This question is about reg cleaners in general.

Did you read your last post in that thread?

[bob3160]

Didn't you just ask this question here?

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=79439.msg653371#msg653371

No, that was relating to whether it was safe to delete a specific reg key. This question is about reg cleaners in general.

Did you read your last post in that thread?

Obviously not.  And I thought I was the senior who could use that excuse  

[Dch48]

I always use the registry cleaning part of CCleaner after uninstalling something. I've found that it does the exact same thing that the Revo Uninstaller does and does it just as well. I always look at what CCleaner wants to get rid of and so far have let it delete everything without bothering with making a backup. I've had no problems whatsoever. Windows itself is perfectly content to let the registry pile up with useless , obsolete references to things that are no longer on the system and over time, this can slow down the system, particularly the boot time. I also run the regular cleaner daily. It does a fantastic job of removing uninstallers for Windows Updates. I let it do that after about of week of using the machine after the updates and having no problems. Those uninstallers and their registry entries can pile up quickly.

I also use the free registry cleaner from Auslogics which digs a little deeper and does automatic backups of what it deletes. I've never had to use a backup and I run it in the advanced mode. I'm a firm believer in the value of a good registry cleaner. In this day and age, they may be of more benefit than defragging which doesn't make nearly as much difference as it used to when hard drives were slow and clunky.

[Hard_ROCKER]

"A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation."

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/10/02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx

[Chris Thomas]

"A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation."

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/10/02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx

People usually get a placebo effect when i clean the registry of a clean system. I kinda clean my registry only if I uninstalled something and that to carefully...

[Hard_ROCKER]

People usually get a placebo effect when i clean the registry of a clean system. I kinda clean my registry only if I uninstalled something and that to carefully...

Yeah same here. I review each registry entry it finds(only use CCleaner though) and only after i identified the registry key as belonging to the app i just uninstalled do i select it for removal.

[Dch48]

"A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation."

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/10/02/registry-junk-a-windows-fact-of-life.aspx

From that same article

Registry cleaners have always been popular, but I never paid much attention to them. I originally thought that there might be valid reasons for their existence, but over time changed my mind, only to recently recognize that even today they can help maintain Registry hygiene.

it’s not only possible, but common, for even best-of-breed uninstallers that have earned the Windows logo from Microsoft to leave our Registries littered with traces of applications deleted long ago.

So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place

[Hard_ROCKER]

Yeah Dch48 no one is arguing that, it's just that your statement:

Windows itself is perfectly content to let the registry pile up with useless , obsolete references to things that are no longer on the system and over time, this can slow down the system, particularly the boot time

Is not correct. That's all i am saying. The amount of registry entries or the size of the registry does not matter. Yeah there is a use for registry cleaners(you can read why in that article) but only if you know what you are doing which most users do not. Simply deleting everything these super-dooper-make-your-pc-100x-times-faster BS registry cleaners identify as bad entries is not the way to go and can cause more harm than good if deleting the wrong keys from the registry and you even go as far as to say you don't backup the registry before cleaning it and that is obviously not the right approach. Caution is the correct approach here, backup that registry before messing with it. Just because you have not shot yourself in the foot yet, doesn't mean it won't happen. Especially if you keep the gun pointed at it and keep pulling the trigger.

If however you say that defragmenting an extremely fragmented registry(i mean the registry hive files) can provide some small performance benefit, then yes i agree with that completely. PageDefrag is one such program that does that great for XP systems however it does not run on Vista/7 and i've always had great admiration for Puran Defrag which defrags the registry hives, MFT and a whole lot more. Runs on Xp/Vista/7 and is free. Highly recommend it. I guess you could only use it for it's boot-time defrag function every now and then and let some other defragger of your choice take care of your data.

[bob3160]

The end result to all of this discussion still reveals that cleaning your registry
might make it a neater disaster area but doesn't really help speed up your system.
Not cleaning your registry leaves you with a larger disaster area that doesn't really slow you down
but is just a bigger mess.
Neither of these assure you that something can't still go wrong with the registry and prevent a reboot but,
not cleaning the registry is the safer way to go simply because "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[Dch48]

I still say that my statement is correct. I said "over time" meaning that if somebody has let those things pile up for a long period, years maybe, removing them can improve boot times and even access times for the things you do have installed. Will it make a difference if you regularly clean it out without letting things build up? Probably not, but not letting it get to the point where it does slow things down is the whole point here. That article also gives an example how only a registry clean fixed problems with being able to connect after changing ISP's so left over things can break other things.

I totally agree about Puran defrag though. I was using Auslogics , which is excellent in it's own right, but Puran seems to do a better job and will defragment everything on the drive. I have switched to it.

[bob3160]

I still say that my statement is correct. I said "over time" meaning that if somebody has let those things pile up for a long period, years maybe, removing them can improve boot times.

Haven't cleaned this registry since I bought the computer 4 years ago. Can't really say it's slow to boot.
But, if it makes you happy, clean your registry