Please recommend a registry cleaner

"...Although some software can leave a lot of crud behind..." Revo Uninstaller free or Pro will help with those pesky uninstalls.

I've been using CCleaner for years on a vast amount of computers, and have never had it delete a file it shouldn't have. Not saying that someday it won't, but as far as I'm concerned, I've probably run it thousands of times on different computers and have never had it take any files away that it shouldn't. Obviously it's up to you to determine if you want to risk messing something up by running it, but so far it hasn't done anything to make me shy away from using it's registry cleaner.

Earlier posts are right tho, no matter how much you trust something, you should always make a backup of the registry before you mess with a registry cleaner.

I have learned that reg-cleaners are pretty useless. They can do more harm than good. Ccleaner though seems to work OK and I have never seen a negative report of it. Whether it helps any is another question.

shadow2201 said:

I've been using CCleaner for years on a vast amount of computers, and have never had it delete a file it shouldn't have. Not saying that someday it won't, but as far as I'm concerned, I've probably run it thousands of times on different computers and have never had it take any files away that it shouldn't. Obviously it's up to you to determine if you want to risk messing something up by running it, but so far it hasn't done anything to make me shy away from using it's registry cleaner.

Earlier posts are right tho, no matter how much you trust something, you should always make a backup of the registry before you mess with a registry cleaner.

Unfortunately my luck ran out rather quickly several years back. I must admit that I was new to Win 7 and completely trusted CCleaner and didn't give what it was doing a second thought. Nor did I have any backups. I know much better ...Now! I'm aware that a lot of people use the program without negative results I just wasn't one of them. I still use it but with extreme rarity and an over abundance of caution.

On Edit:
I've also developed a OCD condition about backups

"...I've also developed a OCD condition about backups..." Hey, so have I, with eight usb ext HDs for three computers.
You and I are in great shape, so long as only our partitions, and not the Loo, backup.

Yes well I use CC a fair bit and one always has the saved stuff to merge back if things go pear shaped which they never have with me. Plus I always back up the reg on a clean install I know stuff is added after but it still has the basic stuff.

What I have found though is that certain softwares for example Symantec leave reg entries even though one uses the official Norton removal tool - even Revo will not clear that crap out.