Registry Cleaners - am I in trouble????

I realize that there are a lot of programs for cleaning the Registry. After a while, I get a lot of left over entries that have to be clogging the registry.

I'm no expert, so when I run a program like Reg Cleaner or Reg Mechanic and they say that I have 800 or 1000 entries that are invalid or useless, etc and I click on "Fix", these entries get deleted. The program also says that I should be careful not to delete some entries because some programs may not work after.

Isn't that somewhat contradictory? It also says I should know what I'm deleting. Understandable; if there is a Symantec entry in the Registry and I don't have any Symantec programs, I could safely dump it. But what about all the entries that are impossible to associate with a know program? How am I supposed to tell what is really necessary or what is trash? Is there a simple way to do this? Or, is there a Reg cleaner program that is safe?

Thanks

 

I have used a number of the Reg Cleaners and have never had a problem. Most of them, and the two that you mention create backup files. If you encounter a problem, just restore the backup for the date that you ran the cleaner and reboot your computer.

I have never had any real serious problems from running Reg Cleaner, but I have had to use the restore function twice. After running the cleaner, try your most frequently used programs to make sure they are running properly.

Also, it is a good Idea to make daily backkups of your registry. If your not sure how to do that, A good program for doing that is WinRescue which is shareware. If you have Windows XP, you can use ERUNT which is freeware and can be downloaded from this site.

 

Thanks...I'll do that.