Registry cleaner?

[apathy]

My Norton says I've got about some 86 registry issues ranging from invalid uninstallers to dead COM references.

Unfortunately, Norton in addition to crypo mining off of my computer, want me to pay extra on top of my subscription to fix these issues (greedy b**tards). Norton Utilities doesn't cover it.

I can fix them myself in regedit, but I don't know what's unused/invalid in there. Does anyone know of a free safe scanner that'll find their locations for me?

[plat]

Well, prudence is not synonymous with FUD, anyway. People remember the CC thing and I applaud that, also putting it into perspective and not over-blowing it. I think (but am not positive) also it was just the 32 bit version affected that abused a certain registry key so that narrows it even further.

Nowadays, it's restricting apps' behaviors as I simply want to cut down on unjust enrichment by these mega-corporations. But the prevailing belief sometimes is: yes it's "free" but payment has to come from somewhere." And ultimately it's the appearance of the targeted advertising that has me taking extra steps. No. Way.

A more recent thing was Avast and its data-scraping scandal. Remember that one? Stuff like that is way more of a concern nowadays. And security companies are getting ransomed--a big one very recently. We need to be mindful but not paranoid.

[emoticorpse]

I only use CCleaner really to do a couple things...

1. Clean the junk/temp files
2. Edit startup

Everything else I don't even touch. been this way for like ever. So I ran it just now and said "let me see what's up with this and what all it can do at this point".

lol. The gui is like a maze and most paths lead me to a dead end. Most features lead you to a point where you have to buy the pro version or you need to have internet connectivity (and seems like stops responding for no internet or for whatever other reasons). I might replace it soon with something simpler and more effective. I always knew it was somewhat bloated, just haven't really felt like messing with it lately.

I'm not even trying to be creative with anecdotes to shoot down your suggestion of using CCleaner. I suppose in the world of bloated programs, it's not worse than anything else out there. Probably one of the better things. It's just that experience they went through that got me.

I really wish they'd update Speccy I really enjoyed how they spit out my computer info.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Oh, I agree with all of that. To be clear, the FUD was not about the security concerns of avast, ccleaner, et-all. I personally see the mountain-molehill argument as stated, but its def not FUD.

The FUD comment was more about registry cleaners as a whole. Many first page posts are about how dangerous they are and how they will break your systems. This is validated by linking to a post from MS that is very obviously just a CYA for them in the event of something going wrong to say "well, it was never recommend". Its far from what I would call damning of the concept, more a legal boilerplate disclosure.

Meanwhile reg cleaners, and the concepts of registry de-bloating and general OS maintenance, are things that have been widely supported and shown good for system health since the late DOS and 9x days. Its a generally safe practice, albeit like all, one that has pitfalls. And in general its better than not to do more so with long-in-place installs with large changes over time.

I find it not unique coincidence that some of the ones who recommend full system wipes regularly and claim windows slows down and gets bloated over time in other threads in the past just so happen to be some of the same ones advocating for a "let windows manage itself and dont mess with it" approach. Letting windows manage itself and not keeping up on OS maintenance is exactly why they feel/see a need to wipe.

The need is there, but only due to lack of action up to that point. Unmaintained windows turns into an unusable mess in about 1-2 years with most users who dont keep up on it :/

[xSOSxHawkens]

emoticorpse の投稿を引用：

I only use CCleaner really to do a couple things...

1. Clean the junk/temp files
2. Edit startup

Everything else I don't even touch. been this way for like ever. So I ran it just now and said "let me see what's up with this and what all it can do at this point".

lol. The gui is like a maze and most paths lead me to a dead end. Most features lead you to a point where you have to buy the pro version or you need to have internet connectivity (and seems like stops responding for no internet or for whatever other reasons). I might replace it soon with something simpler and more effective. I always knew it was somewhat bloated, just haven't really felt like messing with it lately.

I'm not even trying to be creative with anecdotes to shoot down your suggestion of using CCleaner. I suppose in the world of bloated programs, it's not worse than anything else out there. Probably one of the better things. It's just that experience they went through that got me.

I really wish they'd update Speccy I really enjoyed how they spit out my computer info.

Oh yeh, their GUI has gone downhil super bad. And the ammount of push to get pro is insane.

You used to be able to opt out of the trial entirely and download a base .exe of the limited version without any of the pro crap included at all, but now days (as with most companies including MS with our own OS's) its all about the Ad's.

If there were a more readily available and trusted utility with comparable features I would jump in a heartbeat, but as is its the best once you get over its labrinth of bs UI.

That said, I dont use it for much now days as I have another service I use which is paid and has these same style features as a seconadry bonus to the paid version.

[Castyles]

I actually "saved" a bloated machine with the registry cleaner from CCleaner, once. But caution.

Also, if your OS is Windows 10, then just ditch Norton and stick with Microsoft Defender. Norton used to be great, long ago. Not anymore.

[Mittens]

@xSOSxHawkens

Why is it that you think removing a few unused keys in the reg database will in ANY way help keep Windows running good?
Do you know what the reg database even is, and how databases work? Go look it up!
By "cleaning" the registry, only result is that you shave off a few kilobytes of storage space. You don't gain a smoother running OS by deleting unused data.
Also, there's no need to re-install Windows regularly, Windows can take care of itself year after year.

[Illusion of Progress]

I used to use CCleaner years ago (Windows XP and early Windows 7 days, before all the conspiracies with it) and would use it for cleaning the registry, among other small tidying things.

I stopped using it. Not when the controversies started coming out (but that prevented me from returning) but before them. I increasingly felt it was unnecessary and I found myself launching it less and less and eventually uninstalled it.

I don't have to reinstall my OS due to not cleaning the registry regularly, nor does it slow down on me. I don't know what people are doing to feel a reinstall is so necessary or a casual step to take (it's really not), but not cleaning your registry regularly isn't a thing that causes you to need to reinstall the OS. I did occasionally have to reinstall Windows XP way back when though, but I'm not sure if I attribute that to registry cleaning I was doing back then or not (most likely it was other stuff, but this is one possibility).

It seems like you're unlikely to catastrophically break something by actually cleaning it (though the risk is probably there), but you're also unlikely to gain anything from doing.

[A&A]

xSOSxHawkens の投稿を引用：

Wow, the number of people spreading FUD on here about cleaning and maintaining the Registry is ridiculous. It explains why so many of the same posters seem to think (or in fact suggest) annual re-installs of Windows 'just to keep it running well' which is entirely un-needed on a Windows system that is properly maintained. FFS.

Yes l am suggesting to reinstall because my expirience with regestry cleaners is terrible.

Few questions for everybody.

First: How big problem is "86 registry issues" from all 3 million subkeys? (Note: These 3 million subkeys are from clean install of Windows 10 Pro 1607 with Office 2016, l don't know how many he/she have but l am sure it is a bigger number.)

Second: How these "cleaners" understand where your keys or values are not working? Asking because they can tag something as unnecessary when it's actually important which can cause from breaking program to breaking windows.

Third: We are not in Windows 9X era where when you have big regestry, your PC slows down. With the newer versions we have better optimizations for the regestry. Why we have to worry so much? If yes, then why we have to waste our time?

[Electric Cupcake]

I generally use Revo Uninstaller to keep leftover files and registry keys from building up in the first place. There are indeed cases where untidy registry causes problems, like old versions of the Final Fantasy VII 7H launcher. If you uninstall it and the compatibility options got left behind, trying to reinstall it would fail.

[MancSoulja]

Cleaning the registry is something you had to a decade ago when everyone had 5200RPM HDD's and dual core pentiums. today it's completely pointless and ineffectual.

[Nartel1er]

hi

[apathy]

So the general consensus is:

What once could affect your machine's performance years ago, is now a negligible issue today?
Norton are full of s**t?

[emoticorpse]

apathy の投稿を引用：

So the general consensus is:

What once could affect your machine's performance years ago, is now a negligible issue today?
Norton are full of s**t?

I'm not sure registries ever affected pc performance. I know I used it though because when I first started using computers I had such a crappy pc that I looked for anything under the sun software wise to try to compensate for it's sluggyness. I'd defrag, use ram boosters, disk cleaners, internet boosters, anything I could find that would supposedly optimized my pc. Then around the XP days the problem was real and I continued doing the same thing but I think that was because the problem was that everybody was shoving those browser addons and real bloatware onto your pc even with prebuilts. I remember that program called "PC Decrappifier" or something. But nowadays that doesn't happen plug hardware is a lot better so it all equals out to just better performing pcs and if there is a problem it's usually a serious bug in an application that won't be solved by those AIO pc optimizer things.

I've also realized Norton was full of crap even since the XP days but the rest of the world hadn't caught on. I think around when Windows 7 came out that Norton was really dropped by the world and I started suggesting Avast, Antivir, and AVG.

These days you're one of a handful of people still even considering them I think. I'm sure there's people who still use it, but they probably haven't learned any better yet.

[Overseer]

apathy の投稿を引用：

So the general consensus is:

What once could affect your machine's performance years ago, is now a negligible issue today?
Norton are full of s**t?

Have you seen any benchmarks or heard Microsoft suggesting its necessary? If not then why do you even care? What made you think the registry is a problem?

[Crashed]

Beware that some of these "dead COM references" could be for Windows features that are not currently enabled, an if a program were to attempt to create instances of those COM objects it would just get a failure status like if they didn't even exist in the registry. If they were deleted then Windows might not re-create those registry keys and thus the features would be inaccessible even if enabled.