Clogs

This is not a reference to all my good friends from NL.
I am looking at things that clog the registry.
You install an app and then use the supplied uninstaller to remove it. It's gone !
No it isn't.
Install Star Office and uninstall it ...
2514 entries left in the registry
Install MS Outlook and uninstall it ..
582 entries left in the registry
Install Snag-It and uninstall it
385 entries left in the registry

and so on - you can post other cases for sure.

Practically all entries are CLSID's so that no reg cleaner can track them and delete.
So you can spend your weekends chasing them manually.
As far as I know there is no reg analyser that can do it as the app refences are at least three deep and will not be checked ?
regards

 

Correct!

You will never clean the registry of all useless entrys. But you can get most!

The way I do it is before I uninstall a program I become familiar with the executable program names, the folder name, the name of the Mfg.

Often reg entries will have a registry entry for a name that is not documented or mentioned in the program folder so go to help-about and look here for this.

Then uninstall. Then search the HD for these items. Then search the registry. The more you can pre remove manually the better chance you have of exposing a bad/orphan to a full fledged reg cleaner.

Example, Monopoly may be installed in a folder like: C:\Program files\Games\Parker Bros.\Monopoly. Etc. So you would search the HD and registry for all of these.

The rest are best left to Regcleaner, Regscrub and RegSeeker.

That way you will have minimal truly lost orphans left.

Mike

 

Thanks for the useful advice, Mike.
regards

 

You are welcome.

M$ has an office removal tool that will help on Office removal after uninstall. And if ran before a full fledged reg cleaner it exposes a few more to the full reg cleaner that looked legit before the removal tool.

Mike

PS Merlin and all! Recently I was yet again surprised by RegSeeker. For some reason I decided to do a RegSeeker search of the registry for an item that I had just found and deleted with a manual regisry edit. RegSeeker found 2 more! Either MS is purposely skiping something or the RegSeeker search is much smarter.