Cleaning registry

[dynamota]

Hi,

I am running vista for the last few months. I have installed/un-installed programs number of times.

I have tweaked my start up using msconfig. But will using any reg cleaners

1. improve my startup time ?
2. improve performance ?


If yes, what programs/apps is worth looking into

Tx in advance


dyna

 

[Schadenfroh]

1. improve my startup time ?
2. improve performance ?

No

Vista should handle the registry for you quite nicely. If you wish to use one anyway, CrapCleaner should do the trick.

 

[WildHorse]

Here's a comparison of 10 brands.Text

but I don't know how current it is.

Also, TuCows lists 65 brands of registry cleaners, Text

I use Registry First Aid which I bought many years ago and therefore kept it, and upgraded it to newer versions a few times. It looks quite poor in the above comparison.

Usually I also have some free one I download, use awhile till it expires, uninstall, then try some other free one. Keep turning them over. The different brands of cleaners pick up different things.

jv16 is a popular one, but it's also easy to misuse it, which I did once, necessitating complete reinstallation of everything. So I avoid that one even though it's popular.

Lots of guys on this forum will claim reg cleaners don't help, but I find that for me they do. I can perceive snappier operation after reg clean & defrag.

 

[Nothinman]

I can perceive snappier operation after reg clean & defrag.

That's what we call a placebo affect...

 

[hardbench]

I have used regclean by Microsoft for years with good results.

 

[lxskllr]

I've used registry cleaners in the past, and I can discern no difference between cleaning, and not cleaning the registry. If anything using cleaners opens yourself up to problems that may not be immediately evident.

 

[Markbnj]

Uninstalls do a terrible job of removing keys from the registry, and some packages like Norton literally put a hundred or more in there, and will leave many after being uninstalled.

That said, does it matter? The registry is just a database file on disk that is opened when something is needed from it. Portions of it may be resident, I'm not sure, but even a large one isn't large by modern disk standards. Just having old registry keys isn't going to make registry access materially slower, or take up a significant amount of system resources. About the only scenario I can think of would be a situation where a key tells the operating system to do something, or load something, that is no longer possible because the app that put the key there is gone. These situations are rare and usually make themselves evident right away (although perhaps in a cryptic fashion).

 

[PowerRanger]

I've used RegSeeker for many years with no problems...until recently. For some reason it screwed up my network drivers, and made Windows startup take literally 5 minutes. It even took me a while to even realize that something screwed up w/ the registry cleaning. Good thing I made backups of the registry cleaning, and all was well again. Since then I've deleted RegSeeker, and don't plan on using any more registry cleaners.

Also, there was never any noticeable performance improvements.

 

[Rottie]

I have used Registery Cleaner Professional 30 day trial it is easy to use...it doens't messed up with your registery. Also I used ccleaner few times a month to clean up only after i uninstall some programs. But I saw no turbocharge or high performance start up at all

 

[dynamota]

Thank you all for the suggestions.

much appreciated