Windows 7: Disk Defrag, Registry Defrag and Registry Cleaners

After that great response on "Windows 7 running free forever???", I hope you folks can advise me on the following three subjects:

Hard Disk Defrag
Registry Defrag
Registry Cleaning

With the first two, I wonder if Windows 7 inherent capabilities do just as good a job as any of the available programs now do, in terms of results, not just making pretty graphics.



With Registry Cleaning, I frankly don't know if those things do any good, and I know in the last 15 or so years I have managed to break a lot of programs and reinstall those programs to restore function. If I scale back, I really think all I am doing is going through useless motions.

Are there any hard test numbers that prove through any of these "tools"? -Reliable, that is. I have seen a number of "independent review/test sites" that appear to have been set up by manufacturers. Yes I am paranoid about spending money, but to paraphrase: "It might only be a hill of beans, but that is my hill and those are my beans."

Statistics can be manipulated (and are). I can quote as many in favor, as opposed.

The majority opinion (IMHO) is in the hands of an experienced user they are usually safe. In the hands of a noob they can be big trouble.

Since its your hill and your beans, its your call.

Regarding HD defrag, win 7 does it well, but if you are inclined most of these wont bite you.

IMO leave the registry alone.

You'll get a wide variety of answers.

I'd guess the most common answers would be to let Windows do the disk defrag, avoid registry cleaning, and that registry defrag is harmless but pointless.

Quite a few use other defrag tools and would point to the same things you have already seen about how superior they are.

Very few here support registry cleaning.

As far as I know, not many people even consider registry defrag--you don't hear much about it. The registry is child's play for modern CPUs--fragmented or not.

The more obsessive/compulsive you are by nature, the more apt you are to want third party tools.

It used to be when CPU processing power was limited, these things would possibly have an effect on system performance however with advances in technology much less so today although I do believe, since most systems still use spinning disks, regular deframentation if not done periodically, can slow things down.

Avoid registry cleaning or defrag - totally unnecessary in my view and will have little to no effect on system performance. As a previous poster stated, if you know what you are doing with the registry, by all means clean it up but for the the majority of computer users, best left alone.

Test Results should be used as a guide not as indisputable evidence.

IMHO tis far better to do your own research re the "facts /statistics/ evidence tested" & presented > view any Software that might appeal > read the Company blurb about the product > then make up your own mind about what is considered appropriate.... or otherwise.

Re Registry Cleaning...

Generic advice -
If you do not have knowledge of the registry, then you would probably be better off leaving it alone, and definitely not placing blind trust in a program to do the job for you.

Current accepted wisdom with Win 7 is to NOT use a cleaner.

IMO The inbuilt Win defrag is adequate.

Reg defrag > avoid.

Thank-you!

There were times I would go through the proposed registry clean entry by entry - a ridiculous amount of time to insure each was safe, not checking anything I was unsure of, and then wondering what was the point of the cleaning if I could not trust the cleaner? Why not just go through the zillions of entries myself for all the good it would do (a little sarcasm there...). I started checking each item after finding out how destructive a "deep" cleaning could be, for what good could a "pansy" cleaning be??? But if all of that time was needed in order to use the tool, there should be some strong pay-back, which I personally never saw. There were times that I thought it would be better to archive my documents, wipe the entire drive and reinstall from the ground up, especially considering all the time properly checking the registry cleaner's proposed changes took, and at least when I do a full wipe and installation I actually can see results! Of course, that was going back through 3.1, '95, '98, '98SE and XP (I skipped ME, VISTA, and one other in there somewhere).

I suspected that the code probably has improved to the point that whatever benefit those external tools may once have had are mainly hype now - oh yeah, I forgot RAM defragmenting (ROFL). Of course, I still am wondering what ever happened to the MS new file system that was supposed to appear some years ago, but what the heck...