News and Reviews > Mini-Reviews by Members
Registry Cleaning Software
Darwin:
I dither between Registry Medic and Registry First Aid Platinum, when I have a registry cleaner installed at all. At the moment I'm with Registry Medic 4 (though I have a license for RFA Plat 5) because I much prefer the way it organizes entries found by class (active-x plugins and com, start menu, recently used file lists, uninstallers, help files, etc.) as I find it much easier to navigate. For example, it's nice to be able to clear the start menu items and other no brainer stuff all in one go without trying to wade through hundreds (and with RFA it is usually hundreds) of entries. I also find RFA's default method of making changing registry entries to suggested alternatives the default action annoying, particularly when you first run it after a while are looking at 2500 entries or so. If I can get rid of 500 of them right away because I know that they are all related to the start menu (which I mess around with constantly, trying to organise it "best") then that saves me an awful lot of scrolling and reading...
Just my two bits. I wouldn't own current licenses for both products if I didn't like them. I'll probably load RFA on my other laptop, just haven't gotten around to it!
superticker:
I dither between Registry Medic and Registry First Aid Platinum,... I'm with Registry Medic 4 (though I have a license for RFA Plat 5) because I much prefer the way it organizes entries found by class (active-x plugins and com, start menu, recently used file lists, uninstallers, help files, etc.)...-Darwin (September 27, 2006, 01:08 AM)
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Well, Registry First Aid breaks them down too. And you can sort either by their category or rank of fixing safety (green, yellow red). But Registry Medic might break it down with better granularity. I haven't tried that one. Maybe I should.
... I find [Registry Medic] much easier to navigate. For example, it's nice to be able to clear the start menu items and other no brainer stuff all in one go without trying to wade through hundreds ... of entries.-Darwin (September 27, 2006, 01:08 AM)
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Well, you can sort by fit-it-safely level, then fix all the green flagged issues together. But a few of Registry First Aid's suggestions are not correct (even at the green level), so you should exam each one of them. Usually at the green flagged level, you can just delete those bad enties flagged as green.
f0dder:
I've never seen any advantages from running registry cleaners. It's a lot like snake oil, wonderful placebo effect... at best. The really wonderful thing about system breakage is that it happens silently, obscure, and you don't find out until weeks later, when for some reason windows installer fscks up.
defragmenting the registry, however, can bring some decent speed boost - but that shouldn't come as a surprise.
superticker:
I've never seen any advantages from running registry cleaners....
defragmenting the registry, however, can bring some decent speed boost....-f0dder (September 28, 2006, 02:41 AM)
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Tons of obsolete registry entries effectively fragment your registry. Even removing some obsolete entires without defragmenting will speed up your system. Applications will sometime wait for nonexistant service links to respond before timing out. Your results will depend on how well your registry cleaner finds broken links and how well you know how the fix them. A few registry problems require some research with RegEdit and your directory tree to figure out what some installer couldn't. :o
The ... thing about system breakage is that it happens silently, obscure, and you don't find out until weeks later,...-f0dder (September 28, 2006, 02:41 AM)
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All too true. Don't mess with entries you don't understand. The problem is some entries look unnecessary, but how can you really know?
I sent a suggestion to one of the registry cleaner developers suggesting a Windows registry knowledgebase be started on the web for each application key in the registry. This way, by checking the knowledgebase, the registry cleaner can really tell if an empty entry is really needed or not by its application.
f0dder:
Even removing some obsolete entires without defragmenting will speed up your system.
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I've never seen an effect of doing that, and it doesn't surprise me. Windows uses a binary search when looking up keys, which means that even to look up a key in 4.2billion keys it needs to look at maximally 32 keys.
Of course deleting some keys means a little less disk use, but the gains there are very small.
Applications will sometime wait for nonexistant service links to respond before timing out.
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THAT kind of problems can be substantial though :)
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