registry cleaners

am doing some testing on a couple different registry cleaners and i would like some opinions on what people use and what is the better products.

not sure if this is the right forum but am sure if its not petec will let me know and move to right forum.

currently i have installed on my system pctools registry mechanic and i have had no problems with it seems to work just fine.

others i am testing are -

advanced system optimizer and
uniblue registry booster

any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated. amazing how each one of these programs finds different problems even though i periodically run registry mechanic the others still find more problems.

only problem i occassionally have with my xp pro system is with ie6 erroring on urlmon.dll this is when i tried uniblues product and it found tons of errors. i didnt complete the process but ran registry mechanic and did complete the process there and ie seemed to settle down.

again any thoughts would be appreciated....greg

 

My thoughts (and I emphasize that they are strictly my opinions) are that registry cleaners are dangerous and essentially unnecessary. If you want to clean your registry and you do not have the wherewithal to go into the registry and clean it manually, then you should not be messing about with a so-called registry cleaner. I've heard so many horror tales from others who have messed up their computers to the point of needing to reformat. Additionally, most MVP's recommend leaving the registry alone. Any perceived advantage in cleaning the registry is (from what I've been told) very slight. In short, it's just not worth the risk.

 

i do a lot of manual registry functions but there are times when a good cleaner does find and can fix or repair things you never knew were a problem. main thing to remember is no matter what app you use make sure you create a restore point or manually back up the registry. i have never had to rebuild an entire machine because of a registry mistake i may have made - again in most cases you can reverse the registry cleaner and as long as you create a restore point you should be able to get to it either through windows or by a command prompt.

in the old days cleaners were not so good but i have to admit they have gotten better. my opinion but yes in most cases leave the registry alone unless you know what your doing.

 

petec

i hear what both of you are saying and until recently i would have steared totally away from them but there have been a few cases where systems i have been working on just were not responsive and they werent because of spyware or the sort. i would run nortons registry checker even though i hate norton but it always seemed to help. like i said i am very cautious when running them and honestly if it zaps a program or 2 for whatever reason i just uninstall the program and reinstall it.

this morning i was having problems with ie6 on the urlmon.dll crashing on me for no **** reason. ran registry mechanic and only had the problem fix the .dll section and my browser has been steady ever since.

i know of no way like james mentioned to manually clean you registry. i mean how the heck would one know out of thousand of entries which ones are bogus or not needed anymore or cross-linked. there is no way other than rebuilding system from scratch and clean installing everything you want installed. problem with that is that it takes me days to get my main system back to the way i want it and need it. unfortunately 5 years ago when i first went to xp i didnt do a ghost image but i also have to say that in those 5 years being on xp and periodically running reg mechanic i have never had the need to rebuild this system. knock on wood. whereas on 98 i would do it 3 or 4 times a year.

advanced system optimizer does have a lot of other tools built in it besides the registry cleaner its sorta like the jv16.

 

This thread should give you some pretty good information and could be considered as a "must read ". No need to reinvent the wheel.

 

rockster2u

im convinced. thanks to all.