CCleaner help

I use to use CCleaner to clean the Registry and I allways wanted to ask about it.

If I un install say Audacity it will leave files in the Registry and all programs do this.

So when I use CCleaner it sould get any files that are not Hoocked into other Programs anymore.

Well how does it do this and does it work?

If say some programs are un installed then how does it look for files in the Registry to see if they are still Hoocked into other programs?

 

There are often unused registry entries left behind after a successful uninstallation. These unused entries do not affect your computer performance in any way, and are best left alone. These are not "registry errors", as some commercial "cleaners" want you to believe, but just unused entries, taking up a few bytes on your HD.

Some people are obsessed with "cleaning" the registry, and some day they will have scrubbed their registry hives so clean that the computer won't start any more.

 

The registry does not contain any files. The registry contains keys which are folder like objects, values which are named settings like a number or string, and data which is the value stored in the settings.

I'm no expert but my understanding is a registry cleaner searches the registry looking for values that are no longer used such as a value pointing to a file that no longer exists. I do not believe that a registry cleaner searches for shared files left over? The registry just tells the applications where to find the files it does not contain the files. I remember some uninstallers used to ask during the uninstall process if you would like to remove the shared files too but gave a warning of how doing so could cause other programs that used it to have issues.

 

The registry cleaner looks for references in the registry for files that are no longer found on the hard drive or programs that
have been uninstalled.

Exactly How it does all of that is not our concern.
As users, our main concerns are whether the references that it regards as "orphaned" and which it intends to Remove, are
actually legitimate and correct.

If the registry cleaner is too aggressive and tries to find too many unneeded entries, then it will probably remove some that
should not be removed.
That can result in the situation that pwilliner described.

CCleaner is regarded as the safest registry cleaner available.

If you use an uninstaller like Revo Uninstaller or Iobit Uninstaller and CCleaner, you really don't need anything else for
registry cleaning.