Best Registry Cleaner?

[Binky]

Here, I just wrote the best registry defrag out there! Make a text file with this text, and name it regcleaner.bat

@echo off
echo Press enter to clean your registry
pause
echo Cleaning your registry...please wait...
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
echo Done!
pause

/sarcasm

 

[Dude111]

What is the best Registry Cleaner out there that does not break your windows?

The only type of cleaner i use is REGSEEKER and all this does is delete UN-NEEDED keys in your registry......

First time i ran it,it removed about 850 keys (Very good)

www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm


THIS IS NOT FOR BEGGINERS!! -- IF YOUR NOT SURE ON SOMETHING,PLEASE DONT USE IT!

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

The only type of cleaner i use is REGSEEKER and all this does is delete UN-NEEDED keys in your registry......

First time i ran it,it removed about 850 keys (Very good)

www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm


THIS IS NOT FOR BEGGINERS!! -- IF YOUR NOT SURE ON SOMETHING,PLEASE DONT USE IT!

How do you know 850 keys is 'very good'?

 

[Nothinman]

The only type of cleaner i use is REGSEEKER and all this does is delete UN-NEEDED keys in your registry......

First time i ran it,it removed about 850 keys (Very good)

www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm


THIS IS NOT FOR BEGGINERS!! -- IF YOUR NOT SURE ON SOMETHING,PLEASE DONT USE IT!

And you know for a fact that those 850 keys were unneeded how?

 

[Dude111]

Cause they all came up GREEN (Green is safe to remove while RED might not be)

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Cause they all came up GREEN (Green is safe to remove while RED might not be)

I have a few issues with your grasp on reality.

1) How do you know that the software knows accurately when a registry key is safe to remove?

2) How do you know that it is in the programmer's best interests to accurately report how many and which keys are safe to remove?

3) How do you know that 850 keys is better (note I don't say 'more') than what other 'registry' cleaners will find?

4) How do you know that cleaning the registry has any relation to any performance metric?

 

[Binky]

Cause they all came up GREEN (Green is safe to remove while RED might not be)

Hmmmm. Serious? Sarcasm? I can't tell!

 

[Berryracer]

Cause they all came up GREEN (Green is safe to remove while RED might not be)

Ohh seriously?? so if I make a program that will delete your entire registry entries and make windows unusable, yet, I will make the findings show up in green you will clean those entries??

This is the whole point of this thread, is to find out which is the safest cleaner that won't break anything. I say if you have 850 registry errors, then you might as well format your PC instead of cleaning those up and breaking something and not even knowing it.

The safest registry cleaner i've tried so far is CCleaner.

I still can't stop laughing......you cleaned them coz they came up green? :whiste: Seriously d00d wake up

 

[DirkGently1]

Come on guys. It was green, you can't blame him for deleting them. I deleted my entire lawn this weekend for the same reason!

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I think he's embarrassed.

 

[Engineer]

The Registry doesn't need cleaning. Leave it alone.

I tend to agree with this.

 

[hawk82]

I use CCleaner

http://www.piriform.com/

That's also what I use. CCleaner informs you what the problem is with the registry key and suggests a method for fixing (usually it deletes the key). It asks you to backup the registry before any changes are done, which is nice so you can restore the keys if something breaks. I've been CCleaner's registry function for a few years and have not had any problems. YMMV.

 

[atrus.eoa]

Talk about some serious overreactions. I have never once seen CCleaner cause a problem - only fix errors due to programs or services trying to start due to a registry setting. Generally startup and shutdown errors. Now, I could have just gone into most likely the run key in either HKLM or HKCU to clear that one entry, however not everyone is going to know where to look or do so with confidence.

With that said, I agree in theory that it's not a good policy to take such a wide approach to "cleaning" the registry. I just don't agree on take this obtuse DONT USE REGISTRY CLEANERS stance. The pro's for most people probably outweigh any perceived negatives.

I've seen ccleaner seriously borke a system. It was really bad and required an entire reinstall of the OS to fix. There are no pros...that's why people say don't do it. A "clean" registry doesn't run any quicker or anything than a non-clean one. The only *possible* pro is that it *might* be able to scan and detect weird entries due to a virus...that's really it, and that's kind of pushing it as a "pro".

 

[atrus.eoa]

Here, I just wrote the best registry defrag out there! Make a text file with this text, and name it regcleaner.bat

@echo off
echo Press enter to clean your registry
pause
echo Cleaning your registry...please wait...
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
PING -n 2 127.0.0.1>nul
echo .
echo Done!
pause

/sarcasm

I wish there were some type of "rep" system on this board, because I would totally +1 this post.

 

[leg1ndyoll]

I feel it's a little O.T.T. to describe people who use registry cleaners as useless.
I've never had a problem with any registry cleaner I've used creating problems on machines on which I've installed them. Most of the time I install them for friends who have problems with machines who know little if nothing about the upkeep of PCs. When this is done, I'm almost always thanked by them for getting their computers to run better, and for allowing them to keep them that way after I leave. As I do this free of charge I think it's a good way to help the uninitiated PC user to keep a computer running better.
As for an earlier comment about Microsoft not sending a copy of Windows out with errors LOL, when did they ever send out a full working copy of Windows to anyone, it's always full of bugs and errors and is constantly needing updating because of that fact.

At the moment I'm using succesfuly Glary Utilities (free)

 

[Nothinman]

I feel it's a little O.T.T. to describe people who use registry cleaners as useless.
I've never had a problem with any registry cleaner I've used creating problems on machines on which I've installed them. Most of the time I install them for friends who have problems with machines who know little if nothing about the upkeep of PCs. When this is done, I'm almost always thanked by them for getting their computers to run better, and for allowing them to keep them that way after I leave. As I do this free of charge I think it's a good way to help the uninitiated PC user to keep a computer running better.
As for an earlier comment about Microsoft not sending a copy of Windows out with errors LOL, when did they ever send out a full working copy of Windows to anyone, it's always full of bugs and errors and is constantly needing updating because of that fact.

At the moment I'm using succesfuly Glary Utilities (free)

Please don't resurrect year+old threads. But the point is that unused registry keys doesn't cause any problems. The registry is a database and apps only query the specific keys or trees in which they're interested. Defrag, cleaning, etc the registry will have 0 appreciable positive effect but there's a huge chance they'll break something. The risk vs benefit just isn't worth it. Just because your friends thanked you for that doesn't mean it wasn't a placebo. If cleaning the registry had some real effect don't you think MS would have included a tool for that long with chkdsk and defrag?

 

[lxskllr]

Please don't resurrect year+old threads. But the point is that unused registry keys doesn't cause any problems. The registry is a database and apps only query the specific keys or trees in which they're interested. Defrag, cleaning, etc the registry will have 0 appreciable positive effect but there's a huge chance they'll break something. The risk vs benefit just isn't worth it. Just because your friends thanked you for that doesn't mean it wasn't a placebo. If cleaning the registry had some real effect don't you think MS would have included a tool for that long with chkdsk and defrag?

I have a friend with near constant computer problems. I blame a lot of it on compulsive registry cleaning, but it could also be due to running several A/Vs at the same time, and using worthless "tuneup" utilities. I help him around his place doing yard work, and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I do know computers, and he won't take my advice to quit screwing with his system :^S

Anyway, the point is the best thing you can usually do for computer performance is to do nothing. Regardless of what you think of MS, they don't hire idiots. Their systems do a good job of running by themselves, and don't need 3rd party hackware to run better.

 

[wirednuts]

i use ccleaner to clean a registy, if i have to. i usually try not to touch the registry, because it never seems to make anything faster and so many times it makes things worse.

the best registry cleaner is a full format

 

[wirednuts]

I have a friend with near constant computer problems. I blame a lot of it on compulsive registry cleaning, but it could also be due to running several A/Vs at the same time, and using worthless "tuneup" utilities.

*shudders*... im sure hes the guy who always claims "this computer is a piece of sh*t!"

i have scored a couple pc's because people think they are crap. "its soooo slow!"... then i look and its a dual core intel chip. "ill give you $100 for it"... "no way! i paid $600 for this!" then i just say "yeah, they dont make them like they used to"

 

[lxskllr]

*shudders*... im sure hes the guy who always claims "this computer is a piece of sh*t!"

He blames a lot of it on viruses. He handles it all himself, so I can't say one way or the other, but I find it hard to believe a 74 year old guy on dialup gets that many viruses :^D

He's still stuck in the 90s when computers could sometimes use "optimization". He does it now, and will attribute a random speedup to the actions he performed. I think most of it is network problems. On dialup, it doesn't take much to go from blazing fast to intolerably slow(in terms of dialup). There just isn't that much bandwidth play with there. So he'll clean his registry, or dick around with something else, and coincidentally, he'll have an extra 1KBs on his next login, and associate the two.

I also blame pc magazines that review, and recommend the crapware. They legitimize the programs by giving them attention, and reviewing them like proper software. I'd just sticky a note on the front page that says they're all junk, and only add a review if somehow a program miraculously did what it said it would do. Of course that cuts into ad revenue, and kickbacks. You don't sell many magazines by telling people their computer's fine, and they don't have to do anything :^S

 

[TheReaWarmonger]

CCleaner is probably the only cleaner I would trust my registry to. It just does the nit picking for you and lets you know of unused and leftover entries. Tho I usually go through the registry by hand from time to time and wipe out existing keys for software I uninstalled at a earlier point.

 

[Bean7]

TuneUp Utilities - 4 years with no error and very friend for user

 

[mikeymikec]

Something I posted on another thread when registry cleaners / performance enchancing apps came up:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=34966505&postcount=30

 

[DigDog]

i use regedit and delete anything that i feel like, regardless of what it is.

 

[wirednuts]

He blames a lot of it on viruses. He handles it all himself, so I can't say one way or the other, but I find it hard to believe a 74 year old guy on dialup gets that many viruses :^D

He's still stuck in the 90s when computers could sometimes use "optimization". He does it now, and will attribute a random speedup to the actions he performed. I think most of it is network problems. On dialup, it doesn't take much to go from blazing fast to intolerably slow(in terms of dialup). There just isn't that much bandwidth play with there. So he'll clean his registry, or dick around with something else, and coincidentally, he'll have an extra 1KBs on his next login, and associate the two.

I also blame pc magazines that review, and recommend the crapware. They legitimize the programs by giving them attention, and reviewing them like proper software. I'd just sticky a note on the front page that says they're all junk, and only add a review if somehow a program miraculously did what it said it would do. Of course that cuts into ad revenue, and kickbacks. You don't sell many magazines by telling people their computer's fine, and they don't have to do anything :^S

i hear ya 100%.