Registry cleaning software debunked...

[KynloStephen66515]

A fresh install of windows.. time to test my theory about these "registry cleaners"..


It says "upgrade", but its an upgrade on top of a clean install.


There we are, brand new virgin Windows 7 desktop! (the lan is even unplugged)


Lets go to the most annoying website of them all (http://www.mycleanpc.com)


Yes I will download your software! My computer is running slow and is unbearable! (2x 256gb SSD in RAID 4.0ghz intel)


Lets start scanning!


Whoa! I have 8 issues.. I should probably tell Microsoft about this.


...17...


17 to 495 in under 3 seconds.. that Windows 7 disc must have been full of hidden porn.


..556! I better throw this computer away, or pay this company $39.99 to speed this computer up


Time to get this shit off my computer


Wait.. its frozen.. CTL-ALT-DEL? No .. nothing? wtf.. tried 3 times to uninstall


Again...


Had to shut the service down, first time it access denied me. Then I moved the files from the C:\ into the Recycling Bin, went to uninstall and finally got it to work. Nice scam dick wads, hope you get sued to hell.

Source: Imgur
Author: treetop82

[f0dder]

That's not really "Registry cleaning software debunked...", IMHO - it's "scareware taken for a test drive" :-)

[Tinman57]

That's not really "Registry cleaning software debunked...", IMHO - it's "scareware taken for a test drive" :-)

  True dat.  I have some very effective freeware reg cleaners that I use every couple of months or so unless my system starts running slower or unusual.  Getting rid of all the crap/empty/corrupt/erroneous reg entries speeds up the computer and the boot/shutdown process.  And then every great once in a while I defrag the registry which also speeds things up.

[f0dder]

Tinman57: I'd agree with that back in the Win9x days - not so for NT. I honestly can't recall a "registry cleanup" having effect on speed ever since I moved to Win2k, and with a (granted, somewhat superficial) idea of the on-disk and in-memory data structures used for the registry hives, as well as caching optimizations done, I can't see why it would, either.

Now, there might be some specific situations that can be fixed which could cause slowdowns (references to network shares, system startup items that can be removed, et cetera) - but for a normal system, I'd be surprised to see any quantifiable performance effect just by removing "unused" registry keys/values. And some of the "clean up" too much for their own good.

[tslim]

Tinman57: I'd agree with that back in the Win9x days - not so for NT. I honestly can't recall a "registry cleanup" having effect on speed ever since I moved to Win2k, and with a (granted, somewhat superficial) idea of the on-disk and in-memory data structures used for the registry hives, as well as caching optimizations done, I can't see why it would, either.

Now, there might be some specific situations that can be fixed which could cause slowdowns (references to network shares, system startup items that can be removed, et cetera) - but for a normal system, I'd be surprised to see any quantifiable performance effect just by removing "unused" registry keys/values. And some of the "clean up" too much for their own good.

Come on man. Let's say I am itchy and got nothing better to do and try few dozen of utilities on my Win7 directly. I play a while with them then simply uninstall them from the Window's remove program list. You should know, I probably will have quite an amount of rubbish left on my HDD and the registry... hehe...

[tslim]

Ah! and congratulation to Stephen66515, you have found a good crap!

[KynloStephen66515]

Ah! and congratulation to Stephen66515, you have found a good crap!

Wasn't my work, just found this on Imgur.com during my daily browse there, and decided it would be worth a post

[pilgrim]

I use registry cleaners regularly, because of that most of what they pick up is related to temp files.

Just recently MS updated Silverlight, when I ran a registry cleaner on Windows 7 afterwards it picked up well over 700 items, nearly all of which were related to the previous version of Silverlight. The files had been removed (or updated) but not the registry keys. XP was nearly as bad.

[f0dder]

Just recently MS updated Silverlight, when I ran a registry cleaner on Windows 7 afterwards it picked up well over 700 items, nearly all of which were related to the previous version of Silverlight. The files had been removed (or updated) but not the registry keys. XP was nearly as bad.

How much disk space did you save by removing those 700 entries? Even if we assumed each entry occupied 1k in the registry hive file (which I doubt it would), you've saved a whopping 700kb. How much lookup time have you saved? Given the binary-search done on keys and the caching on top of that, I doubt you'd be able to measure a difference.

I understand that it feels wrong having garbage left behind. But the practical implications of this?

[pilgrim]

Disk space has never been an issue to me in relation to the registry and I do not know what you consider to be the 'practical implications'.

You are right when you refer to how it 'feels', I know a lot of people are very much against registry cleaners and I would not try to change their minds.
I also know that you can do a lot of damage with them, some more than others.

My personal view is that provided you make backups, I use ERUNT, and get to learn what you can and cannot do with a particular program you should not have any problems.

Do they actually make a difference?
On XP my answer would be yes, especially over a period of time.
On 7?
Certainly not as much but then again on the computer I have 7 installed on it would probably take quite a lot to slow it down compared to those I have XP on.

I also defrag the registries once a month, on XP that makes a very noticeable difference (on XP Mode as well), again not noticeably on 7.

I have followed this practice for years, using the same programs for most of that time, and never had a problem because of it.
Would I advise others to do the same?
Not unless they knew what they were doing and were prepared to take the time that I did to test whatever program they chose to use, as well as taking adequate precautions against the possibility of problems.

[tslim]

Disk space has never been an issue to me in relation to the registry and I do not know what you consider to be the 'practical implications'.

You are right when you refer to how it 'feels', I know a lot of people are very much against registry cleaners and I would not try to change their minds.
I also know that you can do a lot of damage with them, some more than others.

My personal view is that provided you make backups, I use ERUNT, and get to learn what you can and cannot do with a particular program you should not have any problems.

Do they actually make a difference?
On XP my answer would be yes, especially over a period of time.
On 7?
Certainly not as much but then again on the computer I have 7 installed on it would probably take quite a lot to slow it down compared to those I have XP on.

I also defrag the registries once a month, on XP that makes a very noticeable difference (on XP Mode as well), again not noticeably on 7.

I have followed this practice for years, using the same programs for most of that time, and never had a problem because of it.
Would I advise others to do the same?
Not unless they knew what they were doing and were prepared to take the time that I did to test whatever program they chose to use, as well as taking adequate precautions against the possibility of problems.

I suppose, many don't buy into it because the performance/space gain by registry cleaning/defrag does not justify the cost in doing so.

For me, I rather upgrade my hardware, uninstall programs that I really don't need or plan a better HDD partitioning scheme (assuming you don't use a SSD).

[Tinman57]

Tinman57: I'd agree with that back in the Win9x days - not so for NT. I honestly can't recall a "registry cleanup" having effect on speed ever since I moved to Win2k, and with a (granted, somewhat superficial) idea of the on-disk and in-memory data structures used for the registry hives, as well as caching optimizations done, I can't see why it would, either.

Now, there might be some specific situations that can be fixed which could cause slowdowns (references to network shares, system startup items that can be removed, et cetera) - but for a normal system, I'd be surprised to see any quantifiable performance effect just by removing "unused" registry keys/values. And some of the "clean up" too much for their own good.

  I'm on an XP puter, and I can tell a big difference.  As far as why removing unused reg keys would make a difference, the registry is constantly being accessed by the system and running apps where most all preferences are stored, the difference between scanning a registry that's 60 or 80 MB to scanning one that's been cleaned down to 47 MB AND optimized (defragmentation) makes a whole lot of difference, the CPU don't have to work as hard.

[Tinman57]

My personal view is that provided you make backups, I use ERUNT, and get to learn what you can and cannot do with a particular program you should not have any problems.

  Yep, I use ERUNT before AND after a registry cleaning and/or optimizing.  Best little reg backup on the market....

[pilgrim]

plan a better HDD partitioning scheme (assuming you don't use a SSD).

I've been trying to work out the last part of the comment, why do you make a distinction for SSD's?

I have an SSD in my newest PC plus 2 HDD's, 2 HDD's in my old PC, 1 HDD in my Netbook, all are partitioned as are 2 of the 3 external drives that I own.

The SSD was formatted and partitioned before I installed the OS to prevent it creating a hidden partition, which I did not want.

[tslim]

plan a better HDD partitioning scheme (assuming you don't use a SSD).

I've been trying to work out the last part of the comment, why do you make a distinction for SSD's?

Because:
1. SSD has negligible seek time.
2. You can not defrag a SSD.

Btw, I have 2 SSD, 2 (permanent) + 1 (optional plug/unplug by HDD drawer) HDDs running on my PC.
I own a license of PerfectDisk, but have given up regular storage defragmentation since long time ago.

[pilgrim]

Because:
1. SSD has negligible seek time.
2. You can not defrag a SSD.

Agreed, but neither of those had anything to do with my reason for partitioning the SSD.

I too have PerfectDisk which I still use on XP, after trying several others first I have never found a better program for the job.
I also use Defraggler, again on XP, for individual files.

[tslim]

I remember I read an article about how to reclaim your so called hidden partition space and I also remember the procedures are quite troublesome. I don't think that small amount of space worth the effort.

[pilgrim]

As with the registry, disk space was not a consideration, I had already decided to partition the SSD so doing it first made sense to me although the partitions have been resized since.

As far as I am aware the hidden partition is related to Windows backup and recovery options all of which I have disabled, including System Restore.
If I am not mistaken the files from that partition are still installed if the disk is already partitioned but into a folder on C:\ instead, so they are still there.

[Carol Haynes]

IMHO registry cleaners are a waste of time and money - and worst they cause random problems that don't immediately appear (and so never get associated with the 'clean up').

Try running a registry cleaner before and after installing any version of MS Office and you will find dozens of new 'errors'.

[cmpm]

I used to run registry cleaners, not anymore, too many blue screens.
Plus there is no way to know if or when the registry was corrupted.
I can't boot into a registry restore program, no way I know of anyway.

When I need to, I'll run Ccleaner to find something specific.

[f0dder]

I'm on an XP puter, and I can tell a big difference.  As far as why removing unused reg keys would make a difference, the registry is constantly being accessed by the system and running apps where most all preferences are stored, the difference between scanning a registry that's 60 or 80 MB to scanning one that's been cleaned down to 47 MB AND optimized (defragmentation) makes a whole lot of difference, the CPU don't have to work as hard.

That's plain silly - keys are alphabetically sorted, so they can be searched with binary search... which means that doubling your registry size would require all but one extra comparison. And that's for infrequently-accessed keys, stuff that's used frequently is cached.

[40hz]

I've generally found the only place where a decent quality registry cleaner might offer significant benefit is when attempting to cure some persistent oddball system problem in order to avoid a reinstall of Windows.

As a routine maintenance tool, I haven't found them to bring much to the party performance-wise since Win98. With XP they possibly made some marginal performance improvements. But for Win7, I don't suggest using them for anything other than cleaning out recent lists, temp, and junk files like CCleaner's default settings do. Win7 generally seems (to me at least) to work best when you just let it perform its job its own way. Microsoft did a very nice job with Win7 in that regard AFAIC.

For Win7 I keep regular maintenance to a minimum. I'll religiously stay on top of Microsoft's updates - and keep my security software current at all times for obvious reasons. But beyond that, an occasional CCleaner run, and possibly an overnight system disk optimization followed by a full antimalware scan (no more than once a month if that) has proven more than sufficient to keep everything clean and running smoothly on my own machines. YMMV.

Win8 hasn't been out long enough that I'd trust any 3rd party system utility that directly tinkers with the internals or registry settings right now.

[app103]

've generally found the only place where a decent quality registry cleaner might offer significant benefit is when attempting to cure some persistent oddball system problem in order to avoid a reinstall of Windows.

Yeah, a last ditch effort to save Windows...because by that point, if the cleaner messes anything up, it really doesn't matter.

The only other time I'd consider a registry cleaner is under some very special circumstances, in which most (if not all) of the following apply:

• It is an application specific cleaner.
• It removes only keys related to that application.
• It was created by the developer of that application.
• It was created to address a specific problem, such as a botched uninstall resulting in some stuck keys that prevent subsequent reinstalls.

Usually a .reg file would suffice, but some companies will release an .exe, just to avoid support issues from less experienced computer users, that wouldn't know what to do with a .reg file.

[Tinman57]

Because:
1. SSD has negligible seek time.
2. You can not defrag a SSD.

Agreed, but neither of those had anything to do with my reason for partitioning the SSD.

I too have PerfectDisk which I still use on XP, after trying several others first I have never found a better program for the job.
I also use Defraggler, again on XP, for individual files.

  I use Defraggler myself.  Really great program that's small and remarkably fast.

[Tinman57]

I'm on an XP puter, and I can tell a big difference.  As far as why removing unused reg keys would make a difference, the registry is constantly being accessed by the system and running apps where most all preferences are stored, the difference between scanning a registry that's 60 or 80 MB to scanning one that's been cleaned down to 47 MB AND optimized (defragmentation) makes a whole lot of difference, the CPU don't have to work as hard.

That's plain silly - keys are alphabetically sorted, so they can be searched with binary search... which means that doubling your registry size would require all but one extra comparison. And that's for infrequently-accessed keys, stuff that's used frequently is cached.

  Well it might be silly in your mind.  But if your on an XP machine and using a process viewer or monitor, you can see where there are constant reads & writes to the registry.  When those writes happen, the cache has to be refreshed as well, though there are some exceptions depending on the app.

  Either way, it works for me on my system, and when my system starts getting sluggish a good cleaning always speeds things up.  If something were to break, though I've never had it happen with XP, that's why I use ERUNT.