Do you use a Reg Cleaner

[Andromeda43]

Just a simple question...

Yes, it surely is!

But the answer, as you can see from others' answers, is not that simple.

Everyone has their own idea of what a registry cleaner should be.

It's obvious that some like LLXX don't like them at all.

But that's OK too. (Really)

A registry is like a hard drive....it collects crapola that will eventually cause

severe BLOAT, slowdowns and maybe even a CRASH.

A registry has to load into RAM on boot up. Keeping it clean

of redundant and erroneous entries and compressed, (like defragging a HD)

takes up less RAM and makes it more useful and efficient.

I really hate buying maintenance software for my computer.

So, freeware or maybe even Shareware is the way I like to go.

What I get and use, I share with my many Computer Customers.

I use "REG Clean" by M$ and "Easy Cleaner" from Toni Arts for my

registry cleaners, which do a really great job without taking out things

that could cause problems later. Once clean, I use another little

FREEware program called "NTREGOPT.exe" to re-compress the registry.

I've seen up to 30% reduction in the size of a registry on a customers'

PC after a thorough cleaning.

Heck, just removing Norton from a PC can leave up to 1891 entries in

the registry. They do provide a .reg script to remove those lines.

I don't go for glitz or glitter....I go for what works and the programs

I've mentioned here are FREE and they just work.

Happy Computing!

Andromeda43

[awergh]

no, i still have my free copy of registry mechanic 1 which came with a pc magazine though

[Tarun]

Just a simple question...

Yes, it surely is!

But the answer, as you can see from others' answers, is not that simple.

Everyone has their own idea of what a registry cleaner should be.

It's obvious that some like LLXX don't like them at all.

But that's OK too. (Really)

A registry is like a hard drive....it collects crapola that will eventually cause

severe BLOAT, slowdowns and maybe even a CRASH.

A registry has to load into RAM on boot up. Keeping it clean

of redundant and erroneous entries and compressed, (like defragging a HD)

takes up less RAM and makes it more useful and efficient.

I really hate buying maintenance software for my computer.

So, freeware or maybe even Shareware is the way I like to go.

What I get and use, I share with my many Computer Customers.

Untrue.

Registry Junk: A Windows Fact of Life

Noteworthy quotes

"A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation. Even if the registry was massively bloated there would be little impact on the performance of anything other than exhaustive searches." -- Mark Russinovich

"Registry Cleaners can fix problems associated with traces of applications left behind due to incomplete uninstalls. So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin's tool chest, at least until we're all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files - and then of course we'll need XML cleaners." -- Mark Russinovich

I use "REG Clean" by M$ and "Easy Cleaner" from Toni Arts for my

registry cleaners, which do a really great job without taking out things

that could cause problems later. Once clean, I use another little

FREEware program called "NTREGOPT.exe" to re-compress the registry.

I've seen up to 30% reduction in the size of a registry on a customers'

PC after a thorough cleaning.

Ah, the infamous RegClean by Microsoft. Didn't you look into why they stopped distributing it?

Here, I'll educate you as to why they did remove it. You see, the RegClean utility is no longer supported by Microsoft and has been removed from all Microsoft download sites. This was done for legitimate compatibility reasons with certain applications and Operating Systems. The RegClean utility was originally supplied with Microsoft Visual Basic version 4.0 for Windows. The last version of RegClean was 4.1a (build 7364.1) released on March 13, 1998 (RegClean.exe is dated December 30, 1997). During this time the latest Operating Systems were Windows 95 OSR2.1 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows 98 was not released until June 25, 1998. Compatibility with any Operating System besides Windows 95 and NT 4.0 was never substantiated, especially Windows XP. It is very dangerous to run a Registry Cleaner that was never certified to run on your Operating System since removing the wrong Registry Keys can break Applications and the Operating System. RegClean breaks functionality in the following Applications:

• Microsoft Office XP (Setup)
  
• Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Access 2003
  
• Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003
  
• Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Word 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Excel 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
  
• Microsoft Office Publisher 2003
  
• Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Edition
  
• Microsoft Office 2000 Professional Edition
  
• Microsoft Office 2000 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition
  
• Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition
  
• Microsoft Access 2002 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Standard Edition
  
• Microsoft Word 2000 Standard Edition
  

This occurs for any Microsoft Windows Installer product on which the program's installation state is set to Installed on First Use.

Just to back it up, here's the source.

In short, registry cleaners just aren't needed; they're more trouble than they're worth. If you MUST use something like NTREGOPT, avoid it and get RegCompact.NET, which does everything NTREGOPT does, but makes proper backups too.

Heck, just removing Norton from a PC can leave up to 1891 entries in

the registry. They do provide a .reg script to remove those lines.

I don't go for glitz or glitter....I go for what works and the programs

I've mentioned here are FREE and they just work.

Happy Computing!

Andromeda43

Unfortunately this is not true either. The SymNRT (now called Norton Removal Tool) handles the cleanup and removal of all Norton items, registry, files, folders, etc.

[Andromeda43]

WOW.....that's neat!

Thanks for the stat's.

[Camarade_Tux]

No more. Too little gain, too high risk. In fact, my computer is very clean since I have all the softwares I need (see my sig) and I use VMs; I really don't need reg cleaners.