News and Reviews > Mini-Reviews by Members
Registry Cleaning Software
brotherS:
I can vouch for your reservations. I used RegSeeker in a test ONCE and it cleared out so many entries that my system didn't recognize half my software. Aye, but there's the reason for backups, for sure! Fortunately, I imported and was back to normal.
-zridling (October 11, 2005, 08:00 PM)
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That's very, very strange! It's rated 4.6/5 on http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/RegSeeker/1035382760/1 for a reason.
I never had a problem, using the options you see below and, as you said, it automatically creates backups. I convinced hundreds of newbies (no kidding) to try it and only one had a problem. Turned out later his PC was totally malware-infested (plus he had nasty problems before), so I don't blame RegSeeker at all.
Regseeker = :Thmbsup:
Registry Cleaning Software
Carol Haynes:
Any recommendations on what to use (preferably donationware and EASY to figure out how to use) for doing hard drive backup? I admit that I am guilty of never doing back ups in windows. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
-rrtwister (October 11, 2005, 08:22 PM)
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See https://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/BackUpGuide/index.html
Carol Haynes:
That's very, very strange! It's rated 4.6/5 on http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/RegSeeker/1035382760/1 for a reason.
I never had a problem, using the options you see below and, as you said, it automatically creates backups. I convinced hundreds of newbies (no kidding) to try it and only one had a problem. Turned out later his PC was totally malware-infested (plus he had nasty problems before), so I don't blame RegSeeker at all.
-brotherS (October 12, 2005, 02:30 AM)
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One of the problems is there cannot be a truly automatic way to clean the registry without some unknown effects.
Some software adds registry entries that appear to be wrong - these will be deleted by most registry cleaners on automatic, breaking in the application.
Some software adds dummy registry entries that appear to be obsolete - if deleted you will at best possibly lose your application settings and at worst stop the software working.
Every cleaner I have tried on automatic tries to fix missing files by searching your hard discs for them ... this can lead to all sorts of unexpected results - examples:
* one silly example is linking to missing "readme" files and help files.
* A brilliant example of this was when I double booted my system with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 a few years ago. The cleaner I was using (Norton Utilities IIRC) did a beautiful job of finding lots of missing files in my W2k system. Trouble was it linked all the missing files to W98 versions - took me ages to work out what the heck was going on.
* Another example is I have a piece of software which has a bug in the installer in that a file reference has a spelling mistake. I know this to be the case and edit the entry manually after the app is installed. Any cleaner would simply remove the "missing file entry" rendering the software completely unusable.
* Some of the most widely used software uses the registry in unorthodox ways ... MS Office is a prime example where it installs all sorts of links and dummies into the registry for addons and extras to latch onto when installed. You only find these problems when you try and use them - this may not be for weeks or months and the problem won't be associated with radical registry cleaning. I once had to do a complete format and reinstall of my system because of this as it broke MS Office 2000's installation functions - stopping me from installing, repairing or uninstalling Office at all.
NO registry cleaner is (or can be) perfect in automatic mode. You may not have experienced problems (in which case you are very lucky in my experience) or, more likely, you may have only experienced the problems some time later and lost the association with registry cleaning.
Granted having good backups (even just of the registry tweaks you have made) makes cleaning safer and reversible.
jpfx:
I use ace utilities http://www.acelogix.com/ and/or jv16 powertools http://www.jv16.org/.
Both are well rated, inexpensive and powerful enough to be dangerous. These are definitely appplications that require backups before use.
mouser:
This point by carol bears repeating:
You may not have experienced problems (in which case you are very lucky in my experience) or, more likely, you may have only experienced the problems some time later and lost the association with registry cleaning.
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this is what is so damn dangerous about using something like a registry cleaner -
you may cause a subtly problem that you don't notice for weeks or months... then suddenly you realize that double clicking on a pdf file results in a game of solitaire starting up.
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