Comments on: Are Registry Cleaners Safe to Use?

By: gary bing

gary bing — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:08:26 +0000

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.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:44:13 +0000

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.

By: Best Registry Cleaner

Best Registry Cleaner — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:45:55 +0000

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.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:30:42 +0000

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.

By: bitbyter

bitbyter — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:40:39 +0000

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.

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:27:34 +0000

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.

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:57:22 +0000

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.

By: Hugh

Hugh — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:45:17 +0000

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

By: Fred

Fred — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:24:40 +0000

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?

By: There are Just not Enough Hours in the Day | dv8-designs

There are Just not Enough Hours in the Day | dv8-designs — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:46:32 +0000

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

By: zitiboat

zitiboat — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:15:54 +0000

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.

By: Cary Reinstein

Cary Reinstein — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:47:08 +0000

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.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:31:34 +0000

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.

By: Phillip

Phillip — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:19:29 +0000

Very helpeful

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RSS Digest #80 (The Resurrection) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:56:52 +0000

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