Pete Carr wrote:
> I have tried a few Registry Cleaners with unused files and temp files
> features to clean my Reg and computer. I have have had good and bad
> experiences with them. I currently have CCleaner and RegCure which seem like
> pretty good ones but I have just done a complete re-install of XP Pro and all
> of my programs amd all MS updates. I have installed and un-installed some
> programs etc. When I run either CCleaner or RegCure it shows many errors. (a
> lot from programs I have un-installed and some from programs and system
> programs that are installed. I have decided to not let the Reg cleaners fix
> them for now because I'm afraid they will get rid of a Reg settings or files
> that should not be done thus making computer setup actually worse etc... Has
> anyone used either one of these programs and trust them really well? Also is
> there a "best" Reg/file cleaner out there that is known by many people to be
> the best and work great without doing things to the computer that they should
> not do etc? Thanks a million people.
> Pete Carr
> www.playthatguitar.com
> Fifth Wave Media Inc.
>
>
A registry "cleaner" - even a completely safe one, should such ever
be developed - is, at best, an exercise infutility. There is no need
for registry "cleaners," other than to provide a profit to their
manufacturers. On rare occasions, registry scanners can be, in the
hands of a skilled technician, useful, time-saving diagnostic tools.
Otherwise, they're nothing but snake oil.
Why do you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry? What
specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some program's
bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can be fixed by
using a registry "cleaner?"
If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would
be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the
specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. After
all, why use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally,
the manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely
to have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make
wide-spread multiple changes simultaneously. The only thing needed to
safely clean your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.
The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences. One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change.
Having repeatedly seen the results of inexperienced people using
automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user. If you lack the knowledge and experience to
maintain your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry "cleaner,"
no matter how safe they claim to be.
More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
automated registry "cleaner," particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good, whatsoever. There's
certainly been no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use
of such products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's
performance or stability. Given the potential for harm, it's just not
worth the risk.
Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's no
real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
non-existent benefits.
I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to make
any changes automatically. But I really don't think that there are any
registry "cleaners" that are truly safe for the general public to use.
Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools simply are not safe
in the hands of the inexperienced user.
CCleaner's registry scanner seems relatively benign, as long as you
step through each detected "issue" one at a time, to determine if it
really is an "issue" or not, and then decide whether or not to let the
application "fix" it. In my testing, though, most of the reported
"issues" won't be issues, at all. I tried the latest version on a
brand-new OS installation with no additional applications installed, and
certainly none installed and then uninstalled, and CCleaner still
managed to "find" over a hundred allegedly orphaned registry entries and
dozens of purportedly "suspicious" files, making it clearly a worthless
product, in this regard.
CCleaner's only real strength, and the only reason I use it, lies
in its usefulness for cleaning up unused temporary files from the hard
drive; as a registry "cleaner," it's not significantly better or worse
than any other snake oil product of the same type.
--
Bruce Chambers
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