Registry Cleaners

[brisyd]

I have two Cleaners on my computer both paid for versions, namely 'registry first aid' and 'Regcure'. Both work but when I run them after one another also in reverse order they each still find items to modify. Question is why and is one better than the other in your opinion. Thanks

[rojash]

Judging by all the comments on here:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/regc ure-c4155.html

your should dump regcure.

On the other hand, FirstAid has a five-cow rating on Tucows and is available from a lot of highly respected download and shareware sites.

[vehelpfulguy]

I think the benfit of registry cleaners is overrated. I have run many PCs for months or years and never had to resort to using a registry cleaner.

In older versions of Windows like 98 and ME there was a maximum size for the registry so it was good to clear it out in those days.

This is not true for XP and having a few extra statements in the registry does not do it any harm.

In fact if one of these programs deleted a vital statement from your registry it could cause Windows to stop working properly.

[ACtheTROLL]

your registry is your friend .... don't risk upsetting it.

I've been in the trade now for 20 odd years and read a mixture of popular and trade journals. In all that time I have NEVER EVER EVER (get the idea?) read a review of a registry cleaner. The reviews do mention general cleaners (CC Cleaner, window washer etc) but never include or mention the registry type.

the registry is dynamic .... some stuff is stored there for ever .... (hkclasses root, and local machine) some stuff changes according to the logged on user and some of it changes minute by minute (encryption seeds current docs).

so at any given time ... there is bound to be quite an amount that doesn't relate to the current state but does no harm
download regshot
http://regshot.blog.googlepages.com/regshot
run it 10 minutes apart to see what changes

microsoft say that there is no reason to do anything with the registry (unless it grows over 8Gb!!!) It's a flatfile database which are designed to be huge ... and very efficient

clean out your temp files and folders, defrag your disc
rebuild your machine every 12 months .... and that's the best you can do

[rojash]

Oddly enough, I have just had occasion to use a registry cleaner! One of my clients had a dirty uninstall of (guess what?) Norton, which left behind a context menu entry that was supposed to offer to scan a file - instead it kept asking for the install path for the program. I could have manually edited the registry to get rid of it, but that's a pretty laborious process (finding the entries) over a PcAnywhere connection, so I used a registry cleaner which quickly located the reference and allowed me to remove it.

[Sligachan14]

I've always used CCleaner. If you want to have a look at their 'blurb', the link is
http://www.ccleaner.com/

[figure]

CCleaner does a good job. I like it.

[brisyd]

Thank you all for your comments, I appreciate what you all have said. I do run ccleaner which is very good.