Registry Cleaners

Hi all,

I was reading Major Attitude's "Computer Maintenance Everyone should do", and as I went along, he suggested using CCleaner to remove unwanted files, then use it to clean up the registry. I did that and it found all sorts of issues. I followed his guide and let CCleaner clean up the issues. All is well! Then, further on, he suggests using IOBit Defrag which lead me to their Advanced System Care product which also has a Registry cleaner piece.

This is where it gets confusing. CCleaner found and cleaned up all the issues it found, but if I run the ASC registry cleaner, it finds 143 more issues.

Should I blindly trust it and once again and let it loose in the registry?

 

I suggest ccleaner cant go wrong. When you download it from MajorGeeks website keep the dafault settings on it as is. Also using more powerful registry cleaners can cause harm if you do not know what you are doing with them. Like an example is #1 virus scanner pops up and deletes something bad when #2 didnt pick it up but its still one of the highly used ones. But I suggest just keeping CCleaner of MG website on your computer. Its a nice tool to have.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.
Will have to agree with silas on this call. Most Registry cleaners can indeed do great damage to your system.
(Can you say "expensive doorstop")

 

I'll third that. You have to be very cautious when dealing with the registry.

However, I have used CCleaner for a number of years and have never had a problem with it.

If using XP I also suggest a program called ERUNT, which can be had here at MG. It will back up your registry for you and provides a number of ways to restore it should corruption occur.

 

Another vote for CCCleaner.
The reason you have more "errors" is the programs have different definitions of what an error is. Some will call a key pointing to a missing drive (you took the install CD out) an error, some will not. Although safe to delete, if the program needs the CD again you may need to locate the files yourself. Some call empty entries errors.
I would ignore all but the CCleaner advice unless you want to scan each entry yourself and decide. CCleaner will make the safe decision.

 

Live life beyond CCleaner. :-D

We all love and run CCleaner, right, from http://majorgeeks.com/download4191.html

Try Cleanup! from MG AFTER running CCleaner.
http://majorgeeks.com/CleanUp_d4895.html

Cleanup! picks up stuff that CCleaner misses.

Use both, I do, and have done so for years .
Neither conflicts with each other.

Bazza

 

Thanks to all who replied!
Silas, hrlow2, Spad, DOA, bigbazza & Digitalocksmith.

 

I looked at the screen shot for AFT Cleaner and it has a checkbox for
cleaning the Prefetch directory.

This can actually be counter productive although it is often suggested as a
performance tweak.

Can't find the other sources I've seen advising against this, but here is one:

Beware of Bugus XP Advice

 

i use Eusing Free Registry Cleaner http://download.cnet.com/Eusing-Free-Registry-Cleaner/3000-2094_4-10521691.html its good, also i use ccleaner.

 

I also occasionally use Eusing Free Registry Cleaner and have had no problems with it.

 

No, dr. M, I haven't tried ATF Cleaner 3.0.0.2 . Guess I should :-D After reading all the posts we could end up with 5 different programs. :-D
To restate, I have never had any strife running CCleaner and Cleanup together over many years. Thanks for your suggestion.

Bazza

===

 

If y'all are really worried about stuffing up your Registry by running too many Registry cleaners you might like to install:-
Erunt 1.1j
http://majorgeeks.com/Erunt_d1267.html

My note: Excellent rating. Erunt makes an automatic copy of your Registry as part of your first daily bootup and saves it in Folder C:\WINDOWS\ERDNT\AutoBackup. There will be a new Folder for each day and they ACCUMULATE. So make sure you clean out (ie delete) the older Folders each week. I keep the last 2-3 only, so I clean them out around twice per week. It is really reassuring to have them there although I don't think I have needed them, perhaps once or twice, over the years. NTREGOPT works well, too.

Bazza

PS: I haven't tried it on Vista or W7, so beware.

Baz

 

I used to religiously cleanout my Prefetch directory until someone (I think it was Halo) advised that there is an upper limit on stored Prefetch entries, and then the older ones are dropped off as new entries are entered. I haven't bothered since.

Just checked my Prefetch Folder now. It is less than 6 MB in size and goes back over the last week. Hardly worth worrying about with the size of today's hard drives. :-D

Bazza

===

 

It is not necessary to manually delete those 'extra' backup folders.

If you add a couple of command line parameters to the shortcut in the Startup folder, the AUTOBACK.EXE tool will delete the oldest backup each day, retaining only the number of backups that you specify.

Here is an example:
"C:\Program Files\ERUNT\AUTOBACK.EXE" %SystemRoot%\ERDNT\AutoBackup\#date#__#time# /noconfirmdelete /days:21

The key entries here are:
/noconfirmdelete

and

/days:##

where ## is the number of (backup) days that you want to keep.
Hope this helps. I love this thing. Great utility!

Yes, you're right about that. In CCleaner, that option is not selected (ON) by default, however, it has been the subject of some discussion in the past at other sites.
Some people thought that it should be removed, but it is listed under the 'Advanced' options.
I don't think it actually does any harm, but it does defeat the purpose of the
prefetch info and Windows deletes old entries periodically anyway.

I've also used Eusing Registry Cleaner recently. It found a bunch of invalid stuff on the first run.

I'm gonna try ATF as well.

Thanks!

 

CCleaner vs Ausologics Boostspeed, Whats your opinion?

 

Just an added note here that can Reduce the need for registry cleaners.

I regularly use Revo Uninstaller in Moderate mode to uninstall programs and clean up left over
registry entries. This has worked very well for me and I have not noticed any
problems as a result of its 'clean up' behavior. It Always runs the applications
uninstaller first before doing any additional registry and (left over) files(s) cleanup.

CAUTION!
I found through personal experience, when preparing to update my nVidia display
driver, that you should Not use Revo uninstaller to remove/uninstall nVidia drivers
if you have more than one type of nVidia driver installed.
It's preferable to uninstall the existing display driver before installing the update,
but you should always use Add/Remove Programs to uninstall nVidia drivers if you have other nVidia drivers installed.
When using Add/Remove Programs, you are presented with a dialog
which allows you to specify which driver(s) to uninstall.
Specifically, you can the choose the driver and then specify to remove ONLY
that driver.

Although I have had very limited experience with this
Total Uninstall also cleans up left over registry entries when removing programs.

The last free version that I am aware of was ver. 2.35
I have used this with Windows XP Home SP2, but now I prefer to use Revo.