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What's the best registry cleaner? Ask Leo says: none
MilesAhead:
Trouble with loading up old images, is then I'd lose all the improvements I've installed on my system. Likewise for me, virtual OS stuff seems more pain than it's worth. Sandboxie I like. When I'm done running the program in the prophylactic, I can just kill the sandbox and stop the Sandboxie service. If only it ran in Vista64! :)
I run my system pretty lean anyway. I don't really feel the need to wipe my system partition. I do an image backup every few days to guard against disaster. About the only thing I use to optimize the registry is NTREGOPT, and then only every few months. Just seems to boot smoother for awhile after running it.
cyberdiva:
Or, run your os in a sandbox. I swear by Returnil. Muck it up as much as you want then simply reboot and you are fresh again.
-edbro (July 06, 2009, 03:42 PM)
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Well, I do occasionally use a sandbox, but one problem is that you don't get an idea of how a piece of software behaves during bootup. I was testing one anti-malware program that worked fine...until I rebooted. It then apparently got into a pissing contest with my anti-virus program, with the result that I couldn't even complete the boot process. I've kept the anti-malware program on my system, but only to run scans, not to work in real time and not to start at startup. But testing it in a sandbox wouldn't have revealed this very important problem.
Steven Avery:
Hi Folks,
Cyberdiva, one thing I noticed about SuperAntiSpyware (generally top-notch) was that .. even though I simply wanted it for an on-demand scan .. it was very pushy about putting stuff into the boot-time (possibly hoping that I would need it some day on a real-time upgrade .. clearly it could check for any updates at the beginning of an on-demand run).
Wondering .. was SAS involved in your unruly school children fight ?
As for registry cleaners, probably the best single thing to do is to uninstall with Revo Uninstaller rather than only Add/Remove. After each uninstall you will end up deleting a couple of paths and/or registry entries that would have been left over. The registry cleaning industry, when it is not outright sham and scareware, is much ado about very, very little. If you happen to know a certain type of registry entry is quite recognizable and harmless, you could delete them with CCleaner or Eusing or somebody (the more conservative the better) .. however generally your time would be far better spent elsewhere.
btw, a good number of the techies on the net make $$ one way or another, directly or indirectly (google ads) with the sham & scare products, so they tend to not want to bite a feeding hand and say .. e.g. .. "beware of all the uniblue and paretologic and any google-advertised registry cleaner and speedup products, they are junk and dangerous".
The situation with registry and drivers are similar .. when your system is running smooth and decent, a good way to bring that smooth running to a screeching halt is to do an auotmatic software-directed "cleaning" (registry) or a software-directed "update" (drivers). And the registry is the more dangerous of the two.
Shalom,
Steven Avery
steeladept:
...Likewise for me, virtual OS stuff seems more pain than it's worth....
-MilesAhead (July 06, 2009, 04:20 PM)
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Seems to me you haven't looked deeply into it. Once it is setup, it is by far the easiest way to go. Setup isn't even all that difficult. Personally, I suggest either VirtualBox (freeware from Sun/Oracle, at least for now) or VMWare Workstation (expensive, but comprehensive). VMWare in particular makes development easy by fully supporting branching and snapshotting. In other words, you set up the software, install a "gold image" and then take a snapshot. From there, you can branch new versions of that image and it only saves the differences (conserving space), while still providing a fully functional PC appearance. Go with a different program? Just spin up another branch. Want to delete everything? Just delete the root image and wala, the rest is gone too. VirtualBox supports some of this, and is working toward full support for branching of snapshots, but isn't quite there from the last version I have used. That said, if you have the space, there are other ways around it. Either way, it is very simple, though there is a little bit of a learning curve before it becomes easy. If you had the time, I figure 4 good hours learning and working with it (after installation) should familiarize you with most of these types of functions and how to work around any limitations. That, to me, is really simple for this powerful of software. Maybe it is just me though...
cmpm:
I pointed out Vit Registry cleaner in this thread and have since given it a big thumbs down. It is way too aggressive and ignorant.
Just wanted to point that out since this thread is back up to the top.
Power Tools Lite isn't too bad it seems.
discussed here along with a couple others.
http://www.freewaregenius.com/2009/05/16/powertools-lite-a-new-freeware-version-of-the-famous-jv16powertools-registry-cleaner/
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