Do I Need a Registry Cleaner?

A short note on PC Speeds;I work in a Multimedia store and the biggest problem I see and hear with PC speeds is that people buy additional hardware and load the full suite of software for a given product and have it all come on at start-up. This happens because people just click through the software/driver load without selecting the custom option.Reducing the number of applications launching at start-up and running regular diskclean/defrag can make a PC significantly faster and more stable. Similarly,default settings on Internet Explorer and Firefox can cause huge amounts of useless data to be stored for months on end.Reducing these settings will cut down on storage of unnecessary data without having a negative impact on browser performance. I would as a rule, be very wary of 'free' software particularly when it does a 3-second sweep of your PC and finds 75 faults which only it can fix. Remember,there's no such thing as a free lunch!

Thanks for the instructive articles, Bob. A word about RegSeeker: I have used it for many years, and as a registry cleaner it is downright dangerous, if you don't know what you are doing. But, it has an outstanding search facility ("Find in Registry.." opens it) It is excellent for getting rid of leftovers after an uninstall. Just type in the name of the program uninstalled, and RegSeeker will find all the left-overs, which can then be deleted. All deleted items will be backup on RegSeeker and later also deleted. I find Registry First Aid the best registry cleaner and some good free ones are: Glary Utilities, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, Wise Registry Cleaner and Comodo Registry Cleaner. Bye now, I've still got a lot to read on your excellent site! Thank you.

great article and very important . like most of the user i had a registry problem recntly got some errors and my computer was very slow. i wish i reed this article before but i didnt.
i struggle with few annoying errors and special with "error (login):0x10e0"
i searched the net alot and bought few soft till i found the right one which fixd my registry and solved the errors i had.
hope you wont need it but just in case

IMO, ccleaner is phenomenal at cleaning out (what else) crap in the form of temp files (possible to recover hundreds of megabytes or even a gig or two) and does indirectly help speed the boot process. Indirectly by getting you to clean out startup entries you don't need, not by actually removing invalid entries (note to editor - invalid paths don't slow down the system if the path isn't searched and orphaned paths won't likely be searched by something that doesn't exist).

A friend called me with an issue whereby she couldn't burn a DVD of a wedding she made (and was paid to do) and could I suggest anything. Not knowing the app or seeing the machine, I suggested ccleaner. She was ecstatic that it fixed her problem.

Cleaning your PC should be a three-step process:

1. Uninstall/remove all those cute little programs you downloaded to try and never use.

2. Remove all unnecessary files: temp files, more than 25mb of temp browser files and hotfix uninstall files you'll never uninstall (this will speed up your virus scans immeasurably).

3. Disable all unnecessary startup apps and services (bet 20% of those that load are unnecessary). This will also free up memory which will make your apps run faster.

Sorry, long winded, but I think it's worth printing.

Well I totally "cleaned" it with regclean! Overzealously, I must have cleaned out everything, save for connecting to IE. My operating system on that computer was/is Windows ME and regclean was my final attempt to improve performance before upgrading to XP and then to Vista. Now I get messages that I do not have the authority to open any program, including reading an install disc. Is there anything I can do to salvage that computer? (Please, please say yes!)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes! You can restore the registry backup that you made before using REGCLEAN. What, you forgot to make a backup? Then you can use System Restore to roll back the changes.

I have added a program called System Security by mistake. Now it is on my computer and continues to send messages. It isnt located in add/remove programs. But its running somewhere on the computer. Is there anything I can do to remove or disable this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You need a good anti-virus program to nuke it. See http://askbobrankin.com/should_i_buy_antispyware_or_antivirus_software.html

RegFix is really nice, it works perfect (for me, anyway)

The only problem with it is that its not free, but I was planning on hiring some geek to speed up my old computer - glad I didn't.

http://tinyurl.com/pbvszv

Hi,

Here is some video called "Registry Cleaners - Avoid Scams"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtdvY2jIDFY

I use internet cafes and store my data on a thumb drive. I live in a remote part of the Dominican Republic without internet service. A exe file called ´data administrator´was automatically attached to the thumb drive and written to the hard drive of my home computer. After many attempts I was finally able to rid the thumb drive of it but not my home computer. I have tried registry cleaners but I get a ¨registry access denied¨message. When registry cleaner programs are used the program shuts down and restarts the computer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The "data administrator.exe" is almost certainly malware. See my list of free malware removers here: http://askbobrankin.com/should_i_buy_antispyware_or_antivirus_software.html

I also downloaded malware to my computer. When I locatd the program in my add/remove, it would not uninstall. i installed hijack this and killed it.
Be careful with hijack this it is very powerful. Research the filed/program that you are going to kill before you lay it too waste. Then give to her good.