Are Registry Cleaners Safe to Use?

[...] Are Registry Cleaners Safe to Use? June 10th, 2009 | From: Chris Pirillo [...]

Good advice!

There are a lot of ‘magic’ fixes and tweaks that get passed around on the web, it’s good to see these myths busted.

One that particularly bugs me is when people suggest that you tweak your pagefile to improve performance… despite this persistent ‘help’ I have never, ever, seen benchmarks that prove this helps performance.

This is a very good thing to know. I’ve used registry cleaners in the past like CCleaner. I thought it was safe, even though it asked you to backup the registry. I now know the consequences of these tools.

Thank you.

[...] Is registry cleaning software safe? [...]

Thanks for this! I was just going to download CCleaner! You saved me a ton of trouble!

Hello,

I have some more things to tell about registry.

I also personnaly always said that registry cleaners are useless and dangerous.

But one thing I do is defragment/compact registry hives using ERUNNT freeware so registry get rid of gaps and fragmentation.

One thing also I encountered on Win2K machines (XP seems to have a much higher limit) is that SYSTEM registry is size limited ! if it goes up to 9MB (I don’t remember the exact size) then your system will not be able to start anymore and you’ll get black screen during very beginning of system boot when WIndows tries toload the SYSTEM registry file. You’ll get some “msdos” line showing an error 4 (if I remember well the number) with a stupid message telling some useless error text instead or clearly say ” SYSTEM registry too big”) so it took me a long time to find out the reason and finally found it on MSDN.

The SYSTEM hive can grow a lot if you insert many USB devices and insert them in different USB Ports, especially with USB drives or memory as you can have many and also plug some other from friends.

To clean such drive related entries and some other drive shre related (they will be redeclared as soon as you use them again) I use VxSCRUB that is also small, free and safe.

Thoses 2 tools are the only one you need to “clean” you registry.

But I remember the old microsoft’s RegClean back in 1997 ;-) It has been the only Registry cleaner I ever used years ago ! And it still works ;-) it do not clean many things but if you really want to use one, this one is safe.

Regards.

Regards.

But what if you use CCleaner to make a back-up before it cleans the registry, and then use a registry defragger such as AusLogics’ Registry Defrag afterwards?

I have been using for a couple of years now Registry Booster, from Uniblue. The only reason I went with this one was that it is Windows certified. Indeed, I have been using it without problems since I got it. Every time I run it, it deletes an average of 50 “bad” entries, or more.

While I do understand the issues posted here, I can also say that I use Diskeeper, and it takes care of defragmenting the Registry (it is an option with Diskeeper).

All in all, I think it is a good idea to clean up the Registry, although I wouldn´t go with any software of this type that wasn´t Windows-certified, for at least some peace of mind.

Just to be precise, I just saw at the Uniblue site that the correct term is that Uniblue is a “Microsoft Gold Partner”, and Registry Booster is supposed to be “Windows Vista 32 Compatible”-certified. Or so I hope…

I agree that registry cleaners are useless for speeding up the operation of a computer. However, what I have seen many times in my line of work is that a number of problems (lockup, seemingly freezes, programs constantly asking for installation CD’s, can’t unistall a program, etc.) that were solved by a registry cleaning. We use JV16

I don’t know about CCleaner although I do use it. I primarily use RegScrubVistaXP which has a registry defragmenter built-in. I defrag my registry about once a month to eliminate said gaps. No problems in two years of using it. In fact, I once used it to fix little software popups that were occuring on my aunt’s machine and it’s been smooth sailing ever since. Personally, I’m quite happy with it. I use CCleaner primarily to remove tracking cookies.

At work I am using regseeker to clean-up DCOM problems, DLL, OCX registration and other related information saved in registry.

There are some application that do not clean themself up after uninstall.

So the procedure I use is delete all files related to the apps, delete the entries in dcom config and then run regseeker cleanup to delete all parents and child registrations.

This way the machine is clean an a re-install of the apps will work.

I have been using this procedure for years without any problems.

To quote your line “Over the years, Kat has helped literally thousands of people online to clean and fix up their computers” indicates how bad computer hardware and software design really is. The only resaon a computer should go in for repair is due to componet failure. If the OS was programmed properly we would never need to make decessions on which AV or repair program to choose from. All they “Microsoft’ & “Apple” have succeeded in doing is create make work projects. Chris had this happened, you would probable not be in this line of work. Hard to imagine.

I think it is fair to point out that CCleaner only cleans out the registry when you specifically tell it to, and in compirson with ATF or TFC it is equally as effective in temp file clean up. Agree?

That said, let me clarify….ATF rocks, I use it over ccleaner anyway :P

Excellent article! The same goes for programs like revo unistaller that allows you to remove registry foot prints.

Agreed, Registry Cleaners are rather dangerous.

I foolishly used on the other day, and 2 apps were immediately broken, requiring installation.

There were other problems too. Out of curiosity I re ran the reg cleaner (PC Win Doc Pro) immediately afterward and it found 80 more “problems”.

The question is, why didn’t it find these ‘problems’ on the first pass?

As for the speeding up windows, ‘cleaning’ the registry would never work. It’s a database – removing entries does not shrink a database.

wow… this has opened my eyes up big time. i never knew that cleaning your registry can actually fragment it! i think when people ask “how can i speed up my computer” people will respond with: get more ram, clean your hard drive, and clean your registry. thank you so much for this article, but i have a question about CCleaner, i use it, but not to clean my registry, i use it to clean my temp. files, and the other things it does, is that safe to use? and i have one more question, i have win 7, and have the sidbar app to calculate ram and cpu usage, and when my system is not doing anything, just sitting at the desktop, i am using 1.5 – 2 gigs of ram. is this normal, when i had vista, it was like 2 – 3 gigs at idle, but is this normal? oh and congrats to your assistant!

Hi.. I am just wondering, the whole article is about cleaning registries, and then at the end it is said to not use Ccleaner to delete your temporary files?
Ccleaner has multiple uses, one of them is to clean the registry, and another is that it deletes unneeded temporary files from your computer. These are 2 different things, so why should we not use it to delete temporary files from our computer? as cleaning temporary files, and cleaning a registry are two different things.

I have used Registry Mechanic during the last four years.
I run the app every time I delete a program (with their own uninstaller or with windows´one. That and a regular defragmentation (weekly) keeps the start up and shut down times at the original level.
Thanks for your informed opinion, Ms Kat!

OK, so then why are you still recommending Registry Mechanic and Registry Booster???

I whole-heartedly agree with you. As a professor of an A+ course, my students are always asking me what I use to clean out my registry. When I tell them that I don’t use anything, they are shocked.

As Kat stated, there is really no need to deal with the Registry unless you’re fixing someone else’s mess-up for doing so in the first place.

Great advice, Chris and Kat! Keep up the great work.

Gina.

[...] aims for ten-second boot time with 10.04 Are Registry Cleaners Safe to Use? 2.8 million not ready for DTV transition Rubinstein named CEO of Palm Apple finalizes PowerPC [...]

Very helpeful

I can personally attest to the fact that registry cleaners can hose a system. I’ve seen it happen. Remember, people, you have a program going in there and removing things. How often have you looked at what it’s removing before hitting the “next” button? I know it’s tempting to use these programs thinking your going to save some precious milliseconds. And it’s true, installing and uninstalling applications does leave little bits of refuse behind in the registry. But, like Kat wrote, you are not going to save that much time if any by “cleaning” the registry. You are better off defragging your hard drive and deleting the couple of gigs of “asian models” you have stored and freeing up some hard drive space for other uses.

I worked for Microsoft in the 90s as a Senior Technical Writer. Among other things, I heavily revised the MS-Press book on the registry and wrote the Registry Help File for the Resource Kit. In my opinion, you should never ever use a registry cleaner. CCcleaner and jv16 PowerTools 2009 are excellent tools for OTHER purposes. All of the registry cleaning tools I have ever tried out give as many as 100s or even 100s of false positives. Some of the best sellers in that category don’t even give you a choice. After a scan, it’s delete all or nothing. Frankly, they all present a long list of either harmless or actually important keys and values. if you use one of these cleaners, don’t be surprised if some Windows functions disappear or programs don’t work properly. leave it alone. Windows knows what keys to access and usually does it appropriately.

I fell for many of those registry cleaner come-ons that scan for free and you have 413 problems that can be fixed but only 10 for free then you must purchase. I foolishly thought that if I use enough of the free 10 cleans, eventually I would get a cleaner registry. Then RegCure offered Lavasofts AdAwarePlus as a bonus with purchase for less than the cost of AdAware’s normal premium package price.
What I got was RegCure will find 413 problems and say it fixed all of them. Rescan and you mysteriously have 627 new problems. Good news is RegCure can fix all of them also.
Rescan and you have 329 new problems.
Every subsequent scan finds over 100 new problems. How good can a fix be if you get more problems identified by the product than you started with?
I dumped it fast and dove into the registry manually to ferret out each new entry compared with my backup.
Ended up going to Win7 soon after and nothing that can identify the abundant google trojans is compatible anyways. Had to say goodbye to my trusted friends; ZoneAlarm,Norton,Spybot S&D, and AdAware as they will not allow Win7 to run. More on that in a soon blog post.

[...] Is registry cleaning software safe? [...]

What makes cCleaner bad for temp file deletion? the whole post was about registry cleaning, then you throw in that vague flaming statement with no proof?

For those of us that have been using CCleaner for several years– I assume from your comments that my registry must be full of holes and jumbled entries. Do you recommend that I use a “registry defragger” to correct this problem? If you, do your recommend a particular one?

Thanks,

Hugh

Finally someone with a little sense in their head. The registry is not a amateurs playground. I see customers in my store every day that do just this and accidentally delete a key that controls a vital boot function. However there are a limited number of tools that make direct changes to the registry that in the enthusiast community are absolutely essential. For example RivaTuner and EVGA Precision both make changes to fan speeds by editing registry keys and because the term automatic fan speed often equates to slowest fan speed in all scenarios, it is a necessary evil specially in instances where overclocking is considered.

I do agree that most registry cleaners are over-rated to solve most system errors which is not always correct. Other methods like the Comand Prompt ” chkdsk /r ” and System Restore should always be used first to fix system errors. I have been a computer tech since the days of Windows 95 and have a BA in computer programming and I will say that sometimes when Registry Cleaners are used correctly they can solve some problems. Mostly application related errors. I feel that this article used a very bad example of a registry cleaner, CCleaner is basically a system junk cleaner not a registry cleaner. It only cleans the most safe errors of the system registry. CCleaner is constantly getting updated all of the time and runs on all versions of Windows. ATF Cleaner and TFC are both very much out-dated and lack many settings and user control. I’m surprised that this article recommends these out-dated programs that don’t even support Vista. I will say that I have used CCleaner for many years on my systems and my customers systems and never once has it ever caused any problems and if you read most of the computer help forums they all highly recommend CCleaner. The example that this article should have used a a dangerous registry cleaner should have been RegCure, it is the most popular registry cleaner and it is complete junk. It deletes many needed registry keys by default.

NO; Registry cleaners are not effective.

I’ve fixed a dozen or so computers on which registry cleaners were run.

I’ve never run one on my own systems. My systems have not taken a performance hit because of not running a registry cleaner. That includes an XP system that has been running for 7 years without any problems.

Given that, is there a reason to run a registry cleaner? No.

So you actually charged people to fix registry issues, when you could simply have advised them to use the backup feature that is in all of these programs, including the dreaded CCleaner…

Come on people, this isnt that difficult. I want crap off my PC that I don’t need any longer. It is that simple.

Registry cleaning freewares are available online and the users have to download it to their computers to clean their registry. After downloading the appropriate version of the registry cleaner that is suitable for your OS, the program has to be installed into the system. Installation process is very simple and is less time consuming. For Windows XP users, the need to reboot the system after installation is absolutely not needed. By running the .exe file placed on the desktop, the program will be launched without delay.

have had trouble in the past with my windows registry. I have messed around it myself because I though I could fix something simply. I ended up crashing the computer. I had a hard time even getting to my restore points to restore to a previous session. Now I use a competent windows registry cleaner to help navigate my windows registry.

I was told that Cc cleaner was safe. I was skeptical. Now I have learned to go on my instincts..I have been burned, bad by Regicure. (or however it’s spelled). Never again it was an utter disaster.

I almost used registry cleaner, as recommended by best buy’s geek squad. After reading here I’m glad I didn’t. I have windows xp and my screen saver stopped working. It used to work if I would go to personalizations under control panel and click on apply and ok again, but now even when I do that it won’t come on at all. Any advice?

Registry cleaners are not “cleaners”, they’re simply arbitrary key deleters. You get no performance benefit out of it whatsoever, so if you have no application issues, what’s the point? If you have an issue with an application and half a brain, you should go in and fix the problem manually – the proper way to do it, not a Neanderthalic “Durrr, delete everything and hope the key is recreated with the proper value” shotgun approach. The greatest part is when people reboot the computer once, think it’s fine, and commit the changes, then wonder why, in a few days when a program tries to update or a peripheral’s device driver is loaded, Windows BSoDs. Oh well, it brings me a lot of business to fix the issue.