What's the best registry cleaner?

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RegVac cleans out junk from the registry and seems to do a very good job at it. Computer runs quicker afterwards. (Assuming you've been installing/removing lots of software - average users won't need it).

I agree 100 % with what Leo said/wrote, in fact, I too often stress this on forums where I participate. It's all very simple: these so-called "registry cleaners" are rather useless pieces of software that can be even quite dangerous under certain circumstances (especially for the not-so-computing-savvy users); if anyone maybe wants to, please check out the entry on my own home-site's "articles.html" page titled "THE REGISTRY-CLEANING SOFTWARE MYTH DEBUNKED": http://tadej-ivan.50webs.com/articles.html, or optionally read the Ed Bott's "Why I don't use registry cleaners" article/blog-entry: http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html (my own comments are posted as/by "Ivan Tadej")

In general, these various "orphaned" keys/entrys/values surely make registry hive-files (and their respective backups) unnecessarily bigger, but the size of the registry-files itself certainly doesn't degrade the computer's performance; in other words it doesn't impact the speed of registry operations (and therefore overall computer's speed) nomather how many of them were left after some program was un-installed, or how "deep" the respective key/entry/value resides in the registry structure. It is so simply because the registry is demand-paged, but also registry operations like queries (searching), reads and writes are not linear.

However, there is one exception (as always): I use a Registry First Aid program: http://www.RoseCitySoftware.com/Reg1Aid from RoseCitySoftware site that is rather a "registry maintainer". The thing is that it doesn't clean the registry automatically (like most of "registry cleaners" do) but it offers users to browse invalid entries found, and then you need to choose which ones to fix and how to fix them (although it makes a "suggestion"); btw. this was especially useful when I changed the "ProgramFiles" and "CommonFiles" variables with MS's TweakUI back then, because it simply fixed all that for me instead of doing it manually with Regedit that would be totally time-consuming.

Namely it offers these options after the completed scan:

"Fix entry" (to the suggested value or the one that you choose manually)
"Leave entry without change" (no further explanation needed)
"Delete entry" (no further explanation needed)
"Cut Invalid Substring" (for more complicated values, i.e values with more than one path etc.)

Well, there is one thing that could improve your computer's performance (and is a registry related thing), i.e. it's the "compacting" of physical registry files on hard-disk. You could do this with a Ntregopt: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/index.htm, a program similar to PageDefrag from Sysinternals (which defrags pagefile and .evt files), although this one optimizes only registry hives (i.e. it recreates registry hives from "scratch", thus removing slack space left from modified or deleted keys), and doesn't touch pagefile at all; again, for more details see my home-site, the "14.3.2005" entry on page "events1.html": http://tadej-ivan.50webs.com/other/events1.html.

--

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenija, EU
http://www.tadej-ivan.be/

The best is Webroot's Window Washer which I use all the time. It saves space on my small hard drive. I defrag after I use it. No problems whatsoever.

I use the PCtools Register Cleaner and I know it did speed up the operating system on the machine
I also use it backup my registry and at the same time compact the registry..it does help

How do I add a picture from My Pictures folder to the body of IE 6 outgoing message? I want the picture & not a link. IncrediMail has some sort of proceedure built into its system whereby you can save "Add Animation to IncrediMail Style Box." Then when using their e-mail all you have to do is select from pictures you've saved.

I use jv16PowerTools also and it is a good one. But, their customer Service is nil! Had to do a hard drive reinstall and lost all info. Re-downloaded jv16PT and then wrote (3 or 4 times) for my registration code. As of this date have not received an acknowledgement of any one of them!
Beacuse of this, would recommend using another reg program.

There are many valid points for regular registry cleaning. By regular, I don't mean every day but more like once a week or so.

If your system's registry is filled with invalid file path references (pointers to non-existing files or folders) your computer can easily slow down with a noticeable difference.

This is because trying to access a file or folder that doesn't exist is quite slow. One such access doesn't take even a second, but if your registry has hundreds of these stored the delay can be many seconds. Usually the delay is shown when the computer starts up, or also in general usage.

Other reason, at least for me, to use a registry cleaner is the fact it can clear all my mru data from the registry. Mru data means the most recently used lists of many application, such as Windows media player, Winamp etc. Storing this kind of data in the registry could be seen as a threat of privacy, at least I do.

Good registry cleaners can also compact the registry, it means the size of the registry storage files are reduced without removing any data from them. It's a bit like defrag, the unused blocks of data are removed from the registry storage files and thus the files become smaller. And the smaller the files are, the faster they load to memory on system startup.

A good registry cleaner can also uninstall unused shared components and other such system modules which are only taking up space from your system.

I'm a happy customer of jv16 PowerTools myself, the quality of the software is far superior to its competitors (who focus on making their software look like candy rather than making the software work). Also, Macecraft is one of the rare software developers who listen to their customers and users, they regularily ask for users for their opinions on development, what features should be added and developed, they publish a list of known bugs, they answer to your bug reports and suggestions etc etc.

For me the best registry cleaner is StompSoft's Registry Repair (http://www.stompsoft.com/registry-repair.html)Now, while I agree that at the beginning, of a commuters life, a registry cleaner is not really needed, I do feel that systems that are over a year or so should perform some registry cleanup. I say this because we all know that every little bit of free space we reclaim on our computers after a certain period of time is inevitably good. :)

"I agree that at the beginning, of a commuters life..."

A commuters life? Do you travel much? OK never mind. I just wanted to jump in as it was and say that I agree with what you have said. The beginning of a computers life requires no cleaning at all. But after about a year or two I can't imagine how my system managed to run with all of the crap it had accumulated. Nothing like registry cleaner to the rescue. I see that you use StompSoft's Registry Repair. Is it really good? I've been looking for a something better than the reg cleaner that I've got now.

"I see that you use StompSoft's Registry Repair. Is it really good? I've been looking for a something better than the reg cleaner that I've got now."

I have been using this software for some time now and I can honestly say that I have been pleased with it from the get go. Although, since I don't know what cleaner you are currently using I can not completely say that it is better or worse, but I can say that I have had a very good experience with this software(Registry Repair).

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