Cleaning Windows Registry

Twinbird24

Twinbird24

Member
I've read many articles by PC techs who are completely against registry cleaners and some forum posts of people ruining their computer with a registry cleaner. I've used CCleaner quite a lot and have never had any problems with the registry cleaner. I just fixed a problem with a PC after running the registry cleaner, it was fast and easy. I always create registry backups before doing these scans, however, so if I ever run into a problem (which hasn't happened so far) then I can restore the registry.

So I'm just wondering, what is your opinion of registry cleaners (and CCleaner specifically)?
 
I've always been a bit skeptical as to how much good registry cleaners actually do but I've never had any problems with CCleaner, have used it on hundreds of machines with no issue.
 
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149951/how_to_clean_your_windows_registry_and_speed_up_your_pc.html
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Performance gains are to be had (but work and a learning curve is required) via registry cleaning and tweaking. Pagefile and memory management tweaks are, arguably, not as effective in this day of 4-8GB RAM as they were in the past, but gains are still to be had by edits discretely made.

Boot times may definitely be shortened with proper adjustments to the services at startup. Tracing down bots and malware within the registry manually is not fun, but can be done. Dire warnings from MS aside, the Windows Registry need not be intimidating.

The article above was written three years ago, but still has validity. Start with very conservative options in a pre-made cleaner like Registry Mechanic® and see what it is doing where. There is always a path involved. See HKLM here -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry.

Have fun!
 
http://internalcomputer.com/20-hack-registry-to-improve-pc-performance.computer

Any person not knowing the registry is better off leaving it alone. Benefits may be had, however, from tweaking it. Whether or not it is done manually or via a so-called registry cleaner and judicial programming of its options is the user's call. I encourage all to learn the registry. Otherwise, I would fall into the same category as both MS and those who condemn all registry-modifying software (and, after all, all software modifies the registry -- doesn't it?) without qualification. Or, a person can do as i do and only use that OS from Redmond when absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, should the user choose to stick with Windows, see the above URL.
 
User0one said:
Running registry cleaners offers no benefits
Click to expand...

That's not true at all. Problems in the registry can effect performance and cause errors. The misconception is that removing excess registry entries effects performance, because it really doesn't. It's not about reducing the size of the registry, it's about removing those few troublesome entries that might be causing problems. The easiest example I can think of is missing .dll errors on boot, which can be easily fixed through a registry cleaner.
 
pane-free said:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149951/how_to_clean_your_windows_registry_and_speed_up_your_pc.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance gains are to be had (but work and a learning curve is required) via registry cleaning and tweaking. Pagefile and memory management tweaks are, arguably, not as effective in this day of 4-8GB RAM as they were in the past, but gains are still to be had by edits discretely made.

Boot times may definitely be shortened with proper adjustments to the services at startup. Tracing down bots and malware within the registry manually is not fun, but can be done. Dire warnings from MS aside, the Windows Registry need not be intimidating.

The article above was written three years ago, but still has validity. Start with very conservative options in a pre-made cleaner like Registry Mechanic® and see what it is doing where. There is always a path involved. See HKLM here -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry.

Have fun!
Click to expand...

well said
 
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