PC utilities: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using?
- 2/15/08 12:22 PM
RE: "but I don't want to install a player or any program"
by chappejw - 2/17/08 5:54 PM In reply to: Linux from Windows. by LandyRegLandyReg, nobody is telling you that you have to install a video application, that was just an example detailing how you would do it in Windows vs. Linux.
My point was that the process of installing a program is extremely simply in Linux, but not in Windows. You can install virtually any kind of program on Linux. But, if it's specifically a program that was created by Microsoft, then you have to understand, that Microsoft does not release the source of their code, because if they did, we would be able to compile it ourselves and use it on Linux, but Microsoft would not make the money off you that they do. This is the reason you can get people like me, recommending Linux, and using it, because for every program that you can use on Windows, there may be a number of programs available on Linux/Mac/FreeBSD which do the same thing or better. Linux / Mac / and FreeBSD are all derivatives of the the unix type of operating system which has over 30 years of development in scientific laboratories. AT&T, Berkley, MIT, and many other Universities have participated in the development of Unix and it's Open Source variants.
Google skills are life skills
No. If it is possible, I don't want to reinstall my Windows.
by thljcl - 2/16/08 12:54 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Some people will claim that using a registry cleaner will boast the performance and the speed. I fairly frequently install and uninstall variety of softwares mostly because I am testing beta softwares and trying to use the latest version of the softwares. Disk Cleanup and Defragmentation are the only methods that I use to maintain my PC. After using my PC some time, I may need to reformat the Windows Partition and reinstall Windows. My PC will become problematic if I used a buggy software. If you rarely install softwares, you will never need a Registry Cleaner. If you are a heavy user, reformatting and reinstalling are possibly the best choice at least for me. That's why I don't install registry cleaner.
they are worth using,
by scarlet2007 - 2/16/08 2:14 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
my computer is 7 months old. the hard drive is 78% free. it went from being super fast to very slow in a very short peroid of time. i had been down loading a few things from the web, after firefox ( a recent download ) updated itself... i felt like i was back on my old windows 98 notebook. i did defrag twice & took firefox out but it didn't help.
i then went to cnet & downloaded the free trial of the "advance windows care 2" program. it now works like new. ( if you go directly to their site for the free trial download, you may not get all of the options, if you want to try this, download it from cnet). i used this program on my roommates 5 year old computer, it helped a lot but it's still slow. i don't think it's the product i think she needs to clean up her harddrive.
Another argument against Windows
by onemoremile - 2/16/08 8:40 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I used to use registry cleaners when the Windows machines in my household slowed down. I am not convinced that any of them worked. The only fix that I found to consistently work for slowing Windows machines was a hard drive reformat and a complete reinstallation of the OS.
This is one of the many reasons that I switched to Macintosh.
Use a good Reg Cleaner
by Themisive - 2/16/08 8:57 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When programmes are deleted they often leave "orphan" reg keys, sometimes one programme can leave up to 10 or more keys, get rid of these and your registry will run better - a tip though, ALWAYS back up the registry either with the reg editor or if your cleaner has such a function, a backup of the registry, that way you can always put it back if there are problems.
I would need to know just what they do
by LionsMike - 2/16/08 9:53 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First; let me say that after lots of research I am still far from having enough information to answer any questions about registry cleaners and feel that I have enlightened anyone. So unless you would like to feel less informed about the subject, you probably should not read on.
My registry has to be about as bad as registries get
It appears that my registry (depending on who you believe) takes up about 8 Meg on my hard drive so it might take my computer several hundred miliseconds to read it. I can afford a whole second if it takes that. I have a small hard drive (80 Gig) so it takes up 1/100 of 1% of my hard drive. I can afford that much space. I clean out that much or more every week in old cache files. I don't believe that time or space are factors in the decision
I did some research and here are some interesting facts which I had posted under an other topic and cannot find today (my computer's registry out performs my registry)
Subject: Registry Maintenance
Through several incarnations of my computer I have installed WinXP to upgrade from WinME which was installed to upgrade Win 98 , replaced a 1Ghz AMD CPU And MoBo with a faster FSB MoBo and Intel Celeron CPU (which Was XP Compatible), moved data from a 40 Gig HD to and 80 Gig HD, Replaced the CD-RW with a DVD-RW, increased RAM, upgraded to a 128 Meg Video card, and twice upgraded my CPU. I still have the boot sector information which was installed in Win ME over 7 years ago, and programs which were installed as far back as 4 hard drives and 9 years ago In that time I have installed and Uninstalled hundreds of programs. I have copied small hard drives into larger harddrives. I have installed newer versions of same programs, and add -ons to programs. My Windows Registry has to be an enormous file.
I run Norton One Button Checkup once a week and it scans and corrects registry errors but........ After 5 years I know that there has to be a lot of garbage left in my registry. I thought that it was time to give my registry a good cleaning. I went to the ultimate authority on computer utility software CNET and found a report on what they had found to be the 5 best Registry Cleaners. I downloaded all 5 and scanned my registry. They all scan and give detailed reports for free but you have to purchase a licence to actually clean your registry. I started looking into pricing. In the process I came across a story (probably a paid commercial story) that mentioned that CNET had analyzed the new Registry Mechanic 7.0 and rated it 5 stars. I did find lots of other very good reviews on the program. I downloaded the free scan version and it did find far more errors that the other programs had.
I took screen shots of the reports from all 6 programs before I made my purchase decision. I purchased the licence for Registry Mechanic 7.0 and let it do the cleaning. I then scanned my registry again with each of the programs. I was shocked and very disappointed. Here are the results. It does look like the whole concept is a scam. I wonder if spending an additional $150.00 would help me get better reports.
PROGRAM NAME ------------------ BEFORE CLEANING - AFTER CLEANING
Advanced Registry Optimizer --- 919 Errors --------------- 795 Errors
Error Nuker ---------------------------88 Errors ----------------- 80 Errors
PC OnPoint -------------------------- 874 Errors --------------- 471 Errors
RegCure ----------------------------- 1181 Errors -------------- 870 Errors
RegistryFix --------------------------- 866 Errors --------------- 466 Errors
Registry Mechanic 7.0 ----------- 1654 Errors -------------- 1 Error
If I were to click on a word document (.doc) and my computewr opened my calculator I would know that my registry had a error that needed to be repaired. If I was to see repeated "cannot find" error messages. I would know that my registry had a error that needed to be repaired. I am sure that I could think of more examples of problems which would prompt me to believe that my registry had a error that needed to be repaired. After viewing the scan results before and after Registry Mechanic had cleaned out 1653 errors, I really feel that I am no closer to understanding registry cleaners than I was before I started
UNLESS.....
They are basicly extravigant unneccessary impracticle superficial cleaners whos prime value is purely psychological.
BUT WHO KNOWS....
Registry cleaner metrics
by rbsjrx - 2/16/08 10:22 AM In reply to: I would need to know just what they do by LionsMikeComparing registry cleaners by comparing their reports is a pretty useless exercise, as you've already discovered. Registry cleaners are tools to do a specific job. To compare them, you need to look at how well they do the job, nothing else. So what you should focus on is whether your computer ran any faster after cleaning than before and not worry about how many errors a competing product claimed were left behind. Conversely, saying one registry cleaner is better than another because it reports more errors before cleaning is just as meaningless. The numbers you are comparing may be as much about marketing as anything else. The true measure is in how well they work to make your machine faster and more reliable.
In that case they are 100% useless
by LionsMike - 2/16/08 11:28 AM In reply to: Registry cleaner metrics by rbsjrxI used Registry Mechanic 7.0 to clean a registry which had to be about as bad as one can get (it corrected 1653 of 1654 errors). There was no improvement at all (none that I could detect at least My computer still goes blazing fast instead of super blazing fast. Applications still take 5 or 6 seconds to load. Web Pages still take a whole second to load.
I change the oil in my car and it still only goes 160 mph I don't feel that it is useless because there is no improvement in my cars performance. I do it because I know that eventually my cars performance will suffer. I am running a computer with a registry which had accumulated (without any cleaning as far as I know) more than 8 years of clutter. It does not show any degredation in performance.
I am not saying that registry cleaners are useless. I am saying that I have never seen any evidence that they do anything for a computer. I would be willing to accept their usefulness if someone could tell me just what it is that they do, and if someone could tell me how a great one only cleans 20% to 50% of the errors that the others find.
More information, please
by rbsjrx - 2/16/08 12:01 PM In reply to: In that case they are 100% useless by LionsMikeYou don't provide enough information to provide a useful reply. Your original message detailed your OS history amd your hardware history, but these don't significantly impact your registry. Each time you install a new version of Windows, your registry is reset to pristine Microsoft condition. When you add or change hardware, you will install new drivers, but those don't have a huge impact on registry performance. What really affects registry performance is how much software you have installed and how often you change it - and that is information you didn't provide.
Without knowing your details, I can only reply to your anecdotal evidence with anecdotal evidence of my own. As I mentioned previously, I have 149 subdirectories in my Program Files folder, and some of those are vendor directories with multiple installed applications. I do contract embedded systems development for a living, so I regularly have to install and uninstall large complex development tool suites. Before I began using Registry Booster, my system would slow down significantly after only a few months of use and would get flaky and crash within a year or so, requiring reinstallation of the OS. Since I've been using Registry Booster, my system performance remains consistently high and Windows will remain running for several years before before ultimately succumbing to to other known ills (poor recovery from power interruptions, etc.)
Regular registry maintenance can't take all the credit for this. I regularly run Registry Booster whenever I install or uninstall software or once a month, whichever comes first. But I also run Diskeeper which keeps my hard drives defragmented and runs continuously in the background. I also use Zone Alarm's suite for firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware chores.
If you can't tell any performance improvement from cleaning your registry, then maybe the way you use your computer and the applications you have installed make it unnecessary. I'd therefore reply to your oil changing metaphor with another metaphor - if you don't have a headache, then you shouldn't feel compelled to take aspirin (or acetaminophen or whatever).
This is why I sought a registry cleaner.
by LionsMike - 2/16/08 12:38 PM In reply to: More information, please by rbsjrxI do a lot of beta testing. I install and uninstall between 3 and 12 programs a week so that totals 1,000 to 4,000 over the last 7 years. probably on the order of 1,500 to 2,000 would be my guess.
While running Hijack this I saw references to programs that I know were deleted at least 6 years ago. I do recall thinking "wow that must have been kept when I ran the upgrad from ME to XP". My timeline may have been in error and the upgrade program could erase all references to unaffiliated programs in the existing O/S as it prepares to upgrade.
I do run Norton OBC once a week along with SpyBot AdAware and whichever AV program Is installed at the time. I defrag about 4 times a year with Norton Speed disk.
Cleansing my PCs soul
by maldelus - 2/16/08 10:10 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am a firm believer in the registry cleaner. A registry cleaner purges your sytem of tracks left behind by installations and ensures there are no invalid entries in the registry. It can also remove invalid links to shortcuts no longer there and software uninstallation tracks that had not been fully removed by the software removal. Even the registry needs to be compacted once in a while.
I use Wincleaner and to double check it, I also use Uniblue's registry cleaner.
Concern about consumer reports recommendation on netcom3
by raisabark - 2/16/08 10:57 AM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use Tuneup 2007 as my standard cleaner along with Ccleaner. However, I found a very strong recommendation for Netcom3 made by Consumer Reports. Tried it and bought it (it sells for $9.95/month, cancellable on demand). It found many additional registry problems that neither Tuneup or CCleaner found and running it fixed most of my IE7 failures. However, when reading the user comments on this product, I found that Netcom3 does not respond to user requests; in particular to those wanting to cancel their subscription. I emailed them to see is I could get some detail on their process, but never got a reply, just an acknowledgement that they received my email. The product seems to be quite good in that it was effective for me, although I do wonder if it gives false error indicators (fear monger)like some of the other registry cleaner programs. Does anyone have any feedback on this product?
Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using?
by stahu - 2/16/08 12:29 PM In reply to: Poll: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
No, I bought "Regcure" a year ago and dumped it in Dec. 2007 because it caused more problems than it cured! Every time I ran it, one or more programs would not run anymore and I'd have to re-install them. I never had a "catastophic failure", but I lost Musicmatch Jukebox and could not re-install it after Yahoo stopped supporting it and I decided I "HAD IT".
Your registry is a sensitive area that I believe neophytes shouldn't be monkeying with.
Comment on Regcure
by rbsjrx - 2/16/08 1:00 PM In reply to: Do you think a registry cleaner is worth using? by stahuIn the world of PC utility software, there are a handful of good applications and a lots of dreck published simply as a way for someone to make a few bucks off of the huge PC user audience.
I'd never heard of Regcure before your message and their web site wasn't particularly helpful once you read past the hype. I do know I've never seen it recommended any any independent publication or reliable third party. I would therefore classify it in the same category as the PC utilities you see advertised on TV between ads for salad shooters and Ginsu knives.
There are a number of good PC utility publishers. Some even publish free utilities. I can't understand why anyone would spend good money on such an unknown quantity. I do know your experience is not typical of a good registry cleaner! I've tested several of the major ones and they all seem work comparably well without any major drama once you've gotten past your first scan. As I previously noted, the first time you use any of them on a machine with a heavily corrupted registry, you may encounter problems with your first reboot, but once you settle in to a regular maintenance schedule, you should have no more problems.
RE: RegCure
by LionsMike - 2/16/08 4:20 PM In reply to: Comment on Regcure by rbsjrxRegCure was one of the five that I downloaded and ran a free scan with because those 5 were listed on a CNET article as the 5 top rated. It may be new but it is not unknown (just useless) it found 1181 errors and after Registry mMchanic 7 thouroughly cleaned out 1653 errors I scanned with RegCure again and it only found 870 errors.
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