Registry Cleaners

The extreme caution being espoused is only necessary in the beginning when one is in the learning stage.

Once the nuances of the software being used to clean the Registry are mastered then it can be used like any other software and there is just nothing threatening about it.

I have to disagree. I suspect at any time some of the registry cleaners could remove an important key. Even well established cleaners. Some are quite aggressive. I still say, even if it works fine 1000 times, on the 1001st, it may well do harm. We all agree that they MAY not cause any harm, but that they CAN. Also, not all are created equal. A Guy

Hello Greg,

Normally I would recommend that you keep using that Registry Cleaning Software that you are comfortable with like you are with cCleaner.

As for me personally I have used many Registry Cleaner over the years, starting with Microsoft's Regclean. Some of them have been crap and others good.

However after reading Langa's Letter sometimes in 2005 on Registry Cleaners, I have settled down with jv16 PowerTools. It used to be free earlier but is now shareware. I have not had any trouble with it except once when I configured it to clean the Registry in its most aggressive mode just to see what happened. As it was only an experiment I restored the Registry to its earlier state and was back to normal in a jiffy.

I strongly suggest that you try it out at various levels of aggression to see for your yourself. Its default setting (Level 2) is absolutely safe. At Level 1 it is an insipid cleaner like the cCleaner. At Level 3 you have to be bit careful and should check on the results, as you might get into trouble. Level 4 is the most aggressive and should be avoided if are you not an expert.

Trust this answers your query adequately.

Regards,

Amarnath Wanchoo

gregrocker said:

wanchoo, can you be specific about what Registry Cleaner software you're recommending here? You are the first ranking member to do so who I can remember in serial threads which have been running since the earliest days. Most have never recommended any other than CCleaner.

Why do you feel this is useful in Win7?

And why do you feel this is useful for Win7, by comparison with XP for example?

To be honest I do not see any difference after cleaning or defragging in Win7 except in cleanups which I do where 3-10gb of crap and hundreds of registry remnants are Ccleaned up. But these usually also have dozens of startup freeloaders and other causes which throttle the OS.

I can't even think of any performance optimizing that is required except a Clean Boot or perhaps editing Visual Effects with less than 4gb of RAM. I sometimes forget to do this with 2-4gb RAM with still no hangs. And we can't forget that hardware upgrading is the place to start in such cases.

So I cannot think of a reason in real world usage that require these. So I was hoping someone could explain it to me how they could conceivably be used productively.

To start with your last paragraph first, as I have already explained jv16 PowerTools Registry Cleaner at Level 2 is not risky at all. I have used it for 7 years and I am in a position to comment with authority on this subject.

Now coming to the other two paras, whether in XP, Vista or 7, if you have enough RAM, cleaning of Garbage, Registry and Defragmentation hardly makes any difference at all. The degradation that has taken place on account of non-cleaning and fragmentation is easily absorbed by high levels of RAM and large hard disk capacities. (In fact there are experts who advise against ever defragmenting.) I have noticed this again and again in my friends and children's computers. They call you only when things have come to a grinding halt.

So in a real world there is no need to undertake a clean up exercise yourself. Just ask Greg, Amarnath and a host of other experts here and they shall oblige. But it does warm up the cockles of my heart somewhat, 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.

gregrocker said:

And why do you feel this is useful for Win7, by comparison with XP for example?

To be honest I do not see any difference in cleaning or defragging in Win7 except in cleanups which I do where 3-10gb of crap and hundreds of registry remnants are Ccleaned up. But these usually also have dozens of startup freeloaders and other causes which throttle the OS.

I can't even think of any performance optimizing that is required except a Clean Boot or perhaps editing Visual Effects with less than 4gb of RAM. I sometimes forget to do this with 2-4gb RAM with still no hangs. And we can't forget that hardware upgrading is the place to start in such cases.

So I cannot think of a reason in real world usage that require these risky methods and worry that our appearing to be divided on them will give amateur or enthusiast users a green flag to reach for the next deceptive display ad promising faster speeds.

One problem is that it is not just registry cleaners that clean the registry. Uninstallers do it too. I usually recommend Revo as do others here but I am having second thoughts after I uninstalled Opera using the default moderate mode. It identified a whole slew of registry entries to delete. Some of these were obviously Opera but others seemed more to do with MS Office. They may well have beet genuinely related to Opera but I didn't take the chance.

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