Registry Cleaners

wanchoo · 28 May 2012

I have never ever uninstalled a program in the last four years. My strategy is to begin with four backed up images as follows.

01. The OS, 02. The OS and MS Office, 03. The OS, MS Office, Avast! Free A-V and Comodo Free Firewall, 04. The OS, MS Office, Avast! Free A-V, Comodo Free Firewall and other third party programs like Winrar, VLC, Burnaware, etc that I have used for years and I know that it is not very likely that I am not going to uninstall them.

With these four images in place if I go for a new programs like Puran Defragmenter or GOM Player that I learnt about after joining this Forum, I install them and maybe use for three or four weeks without imaging. Then if I like them I delete the image four and make another image four with these two program. If I don't like them then I restore image four and the two programs disappear for good without degrading the computer. If I liked one of them then I would install that one again after restoring the image four.

The only extra labour occurs if I have to replace a program with a better one, say Burnaware with ImgBurn. Then I have to start by restoring image three and install imgBurn and other programs and get rid of Burnaware. If I have to replace Avast! with MSE then I would have to restore image two and rebuild images three and four, but I would never uninstall a program and thereby degrade the computer. May be it is stupid but I do it as time is not a constraint for me.

Over the years I have identified all the programs that I need and there is hardly ever a need to install more new programs.

kado897 · 28 May 2012

It seems like a lot of work just to avoid uninstalling a program. Why don't you test new programs in a VM if you are worried about corrupting your system?

jimbo45 · 28 May 2012

kado897 said:

It seems like a lot of work just to avoid uninstalling a program. Why don't you test new programs in a VM if you are worried about corrupting your system?

This is the standard way software in general should be tested !!!.
Sometimes however you might need to actually do a real test with REAL hardware - depending on the application - but most software these days can safely be tested on a VM.

IMO if you need to use a registry cleaner then you should really install Windows again.
I certainly wouldn't trust any machine where one of these "Registry Cleaners" had been used -- easy source of malware too.

Cheers
jimbo

Victor S · 28 May 2012

A Guy said:

Victor, can you share this site where this supposedly happened? Because I have yet to see any substantiated reports of CCleaner being responsible for what you described. It is always "I heard", or "I remember reading". I'm sure a lot of us would like to read for ourselves, and determine if it was indeed caused by CCleaner. A Guy

The dangers of using CCleaner | Onsoftware

Look for a post by "Thunderloader" about 2/5 down the page of comments.
He's a CCleaner fan, and says he actually did this purposely. "Stress test." But since he's a fan, he fails to see it as an issue.
I have no reason to disbelieve his account. I've seen similar complaints, but none as clearly defined. You never know what the hell people actually did, unless they document it, and you can reproduce it. You may choose not to believe "Thunderloader," and I wouldn't hold that against you.
Of course he backed up his registry so no harm was done. I don't expect all users to do that.
I was a programmer/systems analyst for 25 years, and have seen my share of "glitches."
And I don't see that occurrence as a big danger. I neither recommend or discourage the use of CCleaner Registry Cleaner.
If I felt like testing it to break it, or see better performance from using it, I might change my mind. But that would be a very time-consuming task, taking many cluttered-up PC's that I don't have.
So I just consider it the Marvel Mystery Oil of Windows.
Which I would never put in my crankcase. But a car engine is much costlier to fix than an OS.
I do appreciate the efforts made by a poster in this thread, who timed the boot of his grand-daughter's laptop, and saw improvement.
That was interesting, but just not enough evidence for me.

wanchoo · 28 May 2012

Thank you for the suggestion. I have never tried VM although I have used Sandboxie. Sandboxie means installing another program that I don't like. I shall read about VM. I only hope it doesn't mean installing another program.

kado897 said:

It seems like a lot of work just to avoid uninstalling a program. Why don't you test new programs in a VM if you are worried about corrupting your system?

kado897 · 28 May 2012

wanchoo said:

Thank you for the suggestion. I have never tried VM although I have used Sandboxie. Sandboxie means installing another program that I don't like. I shall read about VM. I only hope it doesn't mean installing another program.

kado897 said:

It seems like a lot of work just to avoid uninstalling a program. Why don't you test new programs in a VM if you are worried about corrupting your system?

I'm afraid it does. Either VirtualBox or VMWare Player, but of course this would become a part of your core set of programs.

Pilgrim · 28 May 2012

wanchoo said:

if some user wants to learn all about cleaning and defragmenting and do it himself/herself. I don't want to put the fear of God in him/her about Registry Cleaners but tell of the good ones and how to use them properly.

Its just a different point of view. Nothing else.

Amen.

At the end of the day some people will still use registry cleaners no matter what anyone else says, including any dire warnings they might give, surely the most responsible advice that can be given is about how to use them as safely as possible and how to make backups etc. as well as what steps to take if they do run into trouble?

Even the most knowledgeable computer users can run into problems no matter how much they try to avoid them, being prepared to deal with them is the most important thing.

Katanyavich · 28 May 2012

jimbo45 said:

kado897 said:

It seems like a lot of work just to avoid uninstalling a program. Why don't you test new programs in a VM if you are worried about corrupting your system?

This is the standard way software in general should be tested !!!.
Sometimes however you might need to actually do a real test with REAL hardware - depending on the application - but most software these days can safely be tested on a VM.

IMO if you need to use a registry cleaner then you should really install Windows again.
I certainly wouldn't trust any machine where one of these "Registry Cleaners" had been used -- easy source of malware too.

Cheers
jimbo

I am inclined to disagree.

I don't use CCleaner regularly, maybe once every few months.

I ALWAYS back the registry up first, and have never had an issue.

And it sure beats cleaning the registry manually (which I've done
AND it sucks).

My Win 7 Ultimate installation has been running since the retail
was released, never been rebuilt, still runs as sweet as a kitten.

It's ROCK-solid.

Never needed to re-install, and I trust my Win 7 Ult installation implicitly.

Backed it up and upgraded it to Win 8, NO issues except SIW no
longer worked (incompatible).

You DO need to have a bit of 'nous' though, I wouldn't recomend CCleaner
(and quite a few other tools) to a 'newbie'.

jimbo45 · 28 May 2012

Hi there
the reason I suggested re-installing Windows after a while is because a lot of people download and install all sorts of junk on their machines from the Internet often without doing any testing or even bothering to read up a bit about the program they are installing. They certainly don't do any research to find out whether the applications they are downloading are even fit for purpose or have had other users complaining about malware or spam caused by the installation.

What a W7 re-install does is get rid of all this sort of stuff and gets windows back to a state where the user can organise it properly again.

Experienced people won't normally have this type of problem and therefore probably won't need to re-install windows unless something horrible with their hardware happens or they buy a new machine.

Remember also that "Portable apps" can hose things up too -- and often these don't even use the registry.

Cheers
jimbo

Katanyavich · 28 May 2012

A couple of very good points there, Jimbo, especially regarding
downloading any and everything you see.

Went through that stage years ago, got tired of re-installing every
few days/weeks (Win 95/98 would go pear-shaped quite easily).

Worked out which progs worked for me, then stuck with 'em.

These days I only take updates/new versions, unless I need
something I don't have. Then I backup/do a restore-point
before installing.

Common-sense and experience can help you/us/me avoid
most problems, I've found.