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#40
That is only YOUR Opinion....which I do NOT agree with. Everytime this subject comes up, everyone has their own thoughts and opinions. This debate has been going on for years....with no end in sight it seems. I could debate this issue, but I am just tired of this age old debate. You are entitled to your opinion Jeff.....and I to mine.
Driver updates are a much bigger risk to an OS/system, than Registry cleaners.
I've never had a Registry cleaner destroy my system (totally unbootable) but I have had driver updates do it.
I have CCleaner and Glary Utilities installed on my "real" PC and in my Windows VMs (VMware).
I've been using both of them for years and I've only ever experienced one noteworthy issue.
I used CCleaner or Glary Utilities (not sure which now) in a W7 VM that had MS Project 2010 installed in it.
MS Project 2010 seems to create a large number of empty keys and if they aren't present you can't load existing projects.
I only needed to use Project for a couple of my TAFE subjects, so it was only a minor annoyance.
As I've stated previously (IMO) the Registry's main purpose is DRM (i.e. to prevent you from successfully copying your installation and software).
Plain text config files are superior to the Registry system.
Most software used to (effectively) use them, "before the dark times ... before the Registry".
MS reintroduced "desktop.ini" files, because storing customisation data in the Registry turned out to be unmanageable.
Agreed.
Unnecessary Registry keys may increase the "Attack Surface" on a PC (like unnecessary services).
Removing 4 GB of crap from someone's Internet cache definitely improves performance.
If no garbage accumulates in a Windows install, why do some people reinstall Windows every few months and then claim that their PC runs much better?
Seriously? Where does that come from. Have you ever heard of any attack that was enabled by an unused registry key? If an attacker has access to your registry, he can do whatever he wants, but how would an unused registry key be of use to the attacker if they don't have access to your registry?
I don't clean my registry and my PC has never slowed down. I don't reinstall either.
The only thing I ever do is remove unused devices from the device manager (show all devices, even ones not in use, and uninstall them). Those are the only registry entries that might matter, and that is the proper way to remove them,
For me a registry cleaner like CCleaner gives me an idea about the attention to detail in an install.
For example, when a Silverlight update occurs, I see about 105,000 different language packs are referred to and never used.
This is very common on Windows installs - more things get installed or referred to than you will ever use. A type of BLOAT.
I can see why MS might be embarrassed by these tools and discourage their usage.
CCleaner is mostly harmless and quite entertaining.