Do I Need a Registry Cleaner?

Please note that the quote from George Ou on CCleaner is NOT about using the Registry Cleaning portion. I think it would be impossible to run a Registry Cleaner and remove 1 GB of junk. You have taken the quote out of context to support running a cleaner. Not completely kosher!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't want to have a public argument with you, but does it seem reasonable that George Ou would run CCleaner and NOT use the registry cleaner that's built in to it? I don't think so. The bottom line is this: many people DO benefit by running a registry cleaner. And for the record, I don't make a penny if people download RegSeeker or CCleaner. I just recommend them because I and many others have found them beneficial.

The only point that I am trying to impress is that these programs are dangerous and should not be generally recommended, without HUGE caveats. General maintenance such as deleting temp files, running a scandisk and defrag will work on all machines with no ill effects. This is not true with a registry cleaner. Just a last final word from Mark Russinovich.
http://www.whatthetech.com/2007/11/25/do-i-need-a-registry-cleaner/

EDITOR'S NOTE: Interestingly, the website above is an article from November 2007 which quotes Mark Russinovich and his opinion on registry cleaners. But Blair, the author of that post, wrote a followup a month later which was a GLOWING review of Uniblue Registry Booster, showing that it reduces both bootup time and app launch time. Of further interest, the Uniblue website shows that Uniblue is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

So yes, point taken. I will add some additional caveats to my writeup on registry cleaners. But it seems undeniable that they can be a significant help.

One last try. The author in that link, was in fact Blair, BUT the entire post is a quote from Bill Castner who in turn quotes Mark Russinovich for most of his points. So, Blair can review and rave about Uniblue's product, but I think I will place substantially more faith in Mr Castner and Russinovich who have more credentials that whoever this Blair is.

Secondly,note that when he ran Registry Booster, he ALSO ran the defrag option. There is no question that running a defrag application on the registry will result in performance gains, particularly at boot time. But, he did not do any performance testing after just doing the cleaning option. Thus, using the test to validate speedup claims as a result of cleaning the registry is not valid.

I have no qualms in recommending in running a Defrag/Compaction app periodically, but I have still seen no evidence that Registry Cleaners are 100% safe and foolproof, or do anything productive for the majority of PC users.

You should see how adamantly the anti-cleaner group speaks against registry cleaners; or perhaps you've already seen this for yourself. That always makes me curious: just what is so delicate on their systems that is so imperilled by registry cleaners?

I've set up hundreds of XPs, and I also work with Vista and, some years ago, Windows ME. My systems are often elaborately customized, so that they are very pretty for the user (needlessly, but nice) and are based on some fairly complex modifications.

And yet, you would laugh (or recoil in horror) at my use of RegSeeker. I use it on Auto, with either 2 or 4 scans, no registry backups. In other words, I say, "Go to it." That is the least cautious way the thing can be used.

Does it wreck my systems? Nope. Yet these are complex systems, often using, say, 300 small and large apps. Shouldn't things fall apart? Well, I feel it depends on the way things are set up. It must, because so many people report registry cleaners causing them all sorts of problems.

On a typical run on a "good" system, I expect RegSeeker to find about a dozen things it doesn't like. On a clogged system that is running very slowly, I've seen RegSeeker identify over 3,000 problems--which (gasp!) I've let it simply delete. If it is a client's computer, I let it do the backups, which I delete after I'm satisfied all is well.

I'm not suggesting anyone follow my reckless technique. But I am saying that I sure have to wonder about people who seem to run into trouble SO easily.

One comment about CCleaner. I use it and I like it, but I uncheck the Microsoft Office squares. MS Office has a peculiarity, in which, if you change some seemingly trivial registry settings that should cause no damage it all, Office will reset a lot of its tweaked settings to Default. I think it is intended as a protective measure. CCleaner showed up as an extremely suspicious (but unproven) cause for (especially) Word 2000 to revert to its defaults.

Thanks for the article, Bob. (And, for anyone who disagrees wholesale with my take on cleaners, I'd suggest TuneUp Utilities 2008 with its 1-Click Maintenance might be more to your liking. That's a very nice program, too. 30-day trialware; worth the $50 or so pricetag after a month.)

I'm very fond of jv16 PowerTools 2008. Fred Langa, two or three years ago, rated the then current version as the best of the bunch; some older techies may remember RegCleaner, which was the first product by the same author. I can't agree with the "cleaners aren't necessary" comments above: they shouldn't be necessary, I agree, but not all software uninstalls cleanly, not everyone's PC runs clean all the time, and not everyone is able to avoid the sort of problems that a good registry cleaner can clean up after. (Maybe if we all used only Microsoft software, made restore points before doing anything new and only used our computers for writing letters, he might have a better point, but I've been managing PCs since the mid-1980s and I don't use or recommend things that don't do anything useful! Often... ;) )

Windows Registry Pro is the best there is in taking care of any problem you have with the registry,I swear by it,it beats them all,and its been around for sometime now,it have many applications you can use in it for just cleaning out stuff or wiping it clean #1 in the field,don't buy the junk one's this is the real deal!

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.