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Best Registry Cleaner?

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moerl:
Since no DC-Review of Registry Cleaners exists and because this fact means there is no ultimate guide the best program in its category on the web ;), I must ask here. Many of you may not even use registry cleaners, and I use them sometimes, but after a while I just feel like there's too much crap in the registry that could also NOT be there if it were cleaned. The problem with registry cleaning is the incredible numbers of tools available for the job. There are system suites that clean the registry, stand-alone tools that do, and who knows what else. There are so many options for registry cleaners it's ridiculous. Does anybody know which one works reliably and actually is useful? Many of them may just clean the registry of superficial errors.. but I'm looking for a smart, comprehensive registry cleaner that will do a good job and be useful because of it.

Finding the right registry cleaner is next to impossible, given the sheer amount of tools available on the web for this very purpose. So I wonder.. does anybody here know of a comparative review of such tools, or an in-depth look at registry cleaners? If you have an article talking about why registry cleaners are evil and should not even be used in the first place, you can drop that here too. Of course I know they are dangerous and perhaps not even very necessary, but I'm a perfectionist, and if I use my computer for a while and never touch the registry, I just KNOW the registry is going to look like shit after a while. And knowing that really bothers me. It's like not showering for three days. Well, not that I do that.. but I imagine that's what it's comparable to. You sit there and you use your computer, but you know its registry is crammed with crap that needs not be in the registry. It's needless to say that's bothersome.

The Windows registry is one of the crappiest aspects of the OS IMHO. Is there no other way to manage all the settings? Why can't system settings be separated from installed software settings? Why does it all need to be mixed up? And why is the Registry so extremely prone to accumulating complete trash inside itself? It could also be designed in a fashion that is much more transparent and more readily understandable than it is currently.. I wonder if MS has made any progress in this regard with Vista. They've made tons of spectacular improvements to the foundation of Windows with XP, but what's with the registry?

Thanks

brotherS:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=1188.0 :)

moerl:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=1188.0 :)
-brotherS (March 28, 2006, 01:18 AM)
--- End quote ---
Nice thread there! Thanks for the link. I take it from that thread that the shareware favorite is JV16 Powertools? A new version of that is coming up, by the way. JV16 Powertools 2006 is what it's called and it is supposed to be released soon. It will be interesting to see what's new there.
As for freeware, the favorites seem to be EasyCleaner and Regseeker.

Regseeker I've used before.. I've only always wondered just how good it can be being freeware. Now that I've looked at the product website of EasyCleaner, I must say I'm impressed. The blacklist is a very nice feature, something that should be common in all programs dealing with cleaning the registry. I believe JV16 Powertools also uses a kind of black-list and it even has a feature to automatically update that blacklist with an internal updater. That's very nice.

Guess I'll check out EasyCleaner and wait for the new JV16 Powertools 2006 :)

Carol Haynes:
I stand by my argument that I don't really like any of them. If you do use one be prepared to be very selective about what you let it do (that means choosing all changes manually in effect) - and get a solid registry backup before you start!

Most of the time you don't really acheive anything much by cleaning your registry anyway - you may clean out a couple of hundred useless entries - so what, you'd only save a few kb of disc space but functionally it won't make any difference. Remove a critical entry by mistake and you can have hours of heartache trying to find the issue.

Darwin:
I agree with Carol. I used to be really keen on registry cleaning and have current licenses for both Registry First Aid (www.rosecitysoftware.com/Reg1Aid/) and Registry Medic (www.iomatic.com/products/product.asp?ProductID=registrymedic). However, in use two issues arise: on the initial run, the cleaners invariably return a MIND NUMBING number of registry problems and, related to the first issue, using the default settings and simply selecting "clean" at the end of the process can OFTEN render either your system unstable or one or more applications unusable or both... The only way to avoid this is to check each problem to verify that it is indeed a problem. With RFA returning over 2500 and Registry Medic over 650 problems on my system (clean install of WinXP about a month ago, with all my software reinstalled BEFORE installing either registry cleaner) - who has time to check each key! From past experience, the only way around the amazing number of problems reported is to install the cleaner over a fresh Windows install and check the errors reported (there will probably be around 80 or so) and then run it after every software installation/uninstallation.

FWIW, Registry First Aid identifies the most problems and also searches for "fixes" to them which are turned on by default. This is pointless as many of those fixes are completely incorrect, so if you simply run RFA and hit the clean button, you're just adding more useless junk to your registry and possibly mucking it up to boot. Regisry Medic returns fewer problems, also suggests corrections, but leaves doesn't enable those suggestions by default, leaving it up to the user to check them, so if you run a sweep and then hit clean its default setting is to either delete or leave alone the problem keys found. This seems to be a bit safer in the long run but it can knock out applications nonetheless. The safest registry cleaner I've ever used is EasyCleaner by Toniarts (http://www.toniarts.com/products.php?PHPSESSID=4a9d07a476c38303a4105173aebaaf08). It's freeware. However, as noted below, I've never seen a noticeable difference in system performance/stability after having run any registry cleaner.

Ultimately, I restored an image of a "pre-registry scrubbed" C: drive, and don't have a registry cleaner installed. I don't miss them one bit! In over five years of using ANY reg cleaner - Registry Medic, Registry First Aid, RegSeeker, EasyCleaner, and jv16tools I can't really say, on reflection, that I ever noticed a positive change to my system. Ditto for the registry compacting apps that I have run - Registry Compactor, Registry Compressor (both at www.rosecitysoftware.com), and NTREGOPT
(http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/).

The app that I now run instead is Your Uninstaller 2006 (www.ursoftware.com). This sweeps the registry for keys that are known to be added by various installer programs after first having run the application's uninstaller. This then gives the user the option to delete the keys. In over a year of use I've yet to encounter any difficutly in removing all of YU 2006's suggestions. Many people swear by Total Uninstall or Ashampoo's Uninstaller, both of which take snapshots of your system before and after the installation of software. I own the Ashampoo suite but don't have it installed and passed on the opportunity to purchase the new version (Platinum 2) at a 60% discount. This is because I find this approach cumbersome and, if I am not very careful in ensuring that there is ABSOLUTELY no other app running when I install/uninstall new packages, the effects of uninstalling with Uninstaller are about the same as careless use of a registry cleaner. This is probably more a reflection on my impatience than on shortcomings with the app - I'm just too careless too often to make effective use of the power that this approach offers.

Just my two bits, for what they're worth. YMMV.

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