People ask me all of the time if registry cleaning software is safe to use, and which one I would recommend. The truth of the matter is – I don’t recommend using any of them! I did a video about this last year, with the help of some very knowledgeable people.

As most of you know, my assistant Kat is considered an expert in the field of Malware removal and Windows Security in general. In fact, she has been awarded the prestigious Microsoft MVP award four years in a row now. She’s been removing malware on huge sites like GeeksToGo for more than six years, and is a site administrator there. She also teaches malware removal in its free training program.

Over the years, Kat has helped literally thousands of people online to clean and fix up their computers. It’s something she has a lot of passion for, and is very good at. She answers questions like this every day, and recently posted a blog on Geeks about this very question. The information she posted is gleaned from her own experience with users, as well as many of the other experts she works with. I asked her permission to copy it here, so that more of you might be able to read her advice, and even add to the discussion.

Programs like CCleaner can be very dangerous to your computer. NO registry “cleaner” is completely safe. There is also no hard evidence that “cleaning” out the registry has any effect on the overall speed of a machine. It will speed up searches within the registry itself – but has no effect on overall performance.

There are a few misunderstandings about the registry. People seem to think that “cleaning” the registry will make it smaller and easier to manage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. What you are doing is creating mini gaps in the registry’s file. These gaps will be reused by new data that inserts itself into your registry. The end result is that the registry becomes fragmented. Searching the data in a fragmented file is way slower than it is within an optimized file. In short – the only way to speed up the handling of the registry is by completely rewriting the file(s)… and even that is marginal at best.

Registry cleaning will not improve your system speed. Even though there are a lot of orphaned keys and/or values present, you won’t notice a difference in your system speed. The only difference you’ll notice is when actually searching your registry. Do you even ever DO that? I know I don’t.

To be quite frank, if you “clean” your registry often enough, it will become fragmented. That WILL result in slower system performance… quite the opposite of what you were trying to accomplish in the first place. I think I’d rather have orphaned keys in my registry, instead of deleting something by a so-called “cleaner” that should have never been touched.

That’s the problem with programs like these. The will miss entries that are “bad,” and mark good entries for removal. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times over the years. A novice or “normal” computer user hoses their system completely, simply by deleting everything a program such as CCleaner told them to.

If you must do something with your registry, do it manually. If you don’t know how – leave it alone! You honestly never “NEED” to do anything in there. If you have a case of malware that attacks your registry, I urge you to seek help from someone trained to know how to properly remove it. Also, even if you consider yourself to be an expert on the registry… I beg you to take a few extra minutes to make a backup before you begin. I promise you’ll thank me later.

Last, I know there will be people who argue with me. There will be those who swear up and down that CCleaner is a wonderful program. They’ve never had a problem with it! Maybe you’re a tech who uses it in your line of work. Good for you! I’m glad you’ve never had a problem – YET. Even when you know exactly what you’re doing, programs like this still occasionally can and will completely hose a system. I sincerely hope it never happens to you.

credit to Sari and Bobbi_Flekman for some of the wording of this writing.

Kat makes excellent points in the above writing. I hope everyone will take the time to ponder what she’s written, and even add your own thoughts to the mix. If you’re using something like CCleaner to clean out your temporary files – STOP IT NOW. There are some excellent free alternatives that are much safer for your machine – such as ATF Cleaner or even TFC. Both are very safe, and very effective.

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Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ – When you load a program, the operating system puts it into memory, which creates files in your temp folder. You’ll also find data about your recycle bin there, as well as any plugins you may have installed. It is quite safe to delete these files, and there are a couple way to easily do so.

Temporary files are created when a program on your computer is performing an action. If the program closes cleanly, the temp files should be deleted automatically. However, if you end a task, or the program crashes, those files are left behind. There is also data stored in your temp files pertaining to what is in your recycle bin. Even though the files in the recycle bin have been deleted and aren’t running, they are still actually on your system. Emptying that recycle bin is one way to free up some space in your temporary files folder.

One good way to free up disk space and clean your temporary files is to run the Disk Cleanup utility on your Windows computer. You can access this in one of three ways:

• Click Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup
• Click Start | Run and in the Open box type cleanmgr and click OK
• Go to My Computer, right-click the disk in which you want to free up space, click Properties, click the General tab, and then click Disk Cleanup.

There is an excellent free program that was created by one of the friends of our live broadcast and chat room. ATF Cleaner is free, as I mentioned. It doesn’t have to be installed, so it takes up no space on your computer. You can use this to clean and/or manage not only your temp files, but your cookies, cache, and saved passwords. Check out the complete guide for how to use ATF Cleaner.

You could also choose to use CCleaner. This is a free program as well, and very powerful. It has a registry cleaner built in, in addition to the other cleaners. I caution you to always back up your registry first, prior to doing any cleaning of it, or making any changes.

Before we signed off on this video, we tried something new. Most of you know that GoDaddy.com is now our video sponsor. We are going to try and do a poll for every video, to include the results, thanks to GoDaddy. Today’s poll was asking our live chatters if they feel it is safe to delete temp files. Nearly 90% of them agreed that it is. So there you go, Kyle. Thanks for the question!

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