Are Registry Cleaners Still Needed on Windows 10?

OldMike65 said:

Depends on who's "cold logic" I guess.....lol

Except there's no my or your logic, it's impersonal, like math.

OldMike65 said:

I always hated math.....grrrrr lol I will never try to change your mind, plus.....I like you....you old fart!!! Think we might even be close in age.....course MY beard is much neater looking then yours. :)

But, but, but.... I'm only 68 and my beard is older than most people i know (the rest are dead) !!!!
Yes Mr. Spock is my idol.

OldMike65 said:

Ok then I'm the young pup then as I am only 65, and Spock was my 2nd favorite....Kirk was my favorite.

Lt. Uhura was nice too.

What's the bet that system cleaners delete the accumulated "surveillance" data that MS wants to sell?

Geneo said:

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?

Note the use of the word "may".

Empty keys are probably not an issue, depending exactly how Registry permissions and software interacts.
Leftover keys can contain anything, including commands:

For example, .ccd key > "C:\Program Files (x86)\ImgBurn\ImgBurn.exe" /MODE WRITE /SOURCE "%1"

I hypothesise that they could be used in a multi-part attack; contaminated "trialware" installers in combination with special files or Internet sites.
The uninstaller for the contaminated installer uninstalls the program, but it "accidentally" leaves a stack of keys, which are used by the real attack.

Geneo said:

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,

All OS installs slow down over time, even Linux Distros.
My W10 IP VM with a handful of software (without Office or Adobe bloatware) takes twice as long to boot, as an empty W10 IP VM took.

In W7, winsxs seems to fill up with junk.
A clean install of the OS and using latest program installers, seems to run faster than an old install (on my PC).

My W7 used to sometimes boot up in ~30 seconds (even just after SP1).
Before I replaced my HDD with an SSD (a few weeks ago) it rarely booted in under ~55 seconds.

jimbo45 said:

my own view on this is that if you need a registry cleaner then you should either re-install windows from new or restore from a good backup.

These days with really cheap storage there's NO EXCUSE WHATEVER for not taking loads of backups -- I always take one before installing software in case the software doesn't work, I don't like it or I prefer the "previous" version.

Most ordinary users don't create Backup Images OR run Registry Cleaners.

BunnyJ said:

Just wondering how anyone could accumulate 4gb of internet cache?? Really???

The first time I tried CCleaner was pre-W7 (on XP) and my Internet cache had 2 GB of junk in it.

In 2012, I cleaned a friend's mother's XP machine and it had 4 GB of junk.
I assume that it was still the original install and no cleaners (including Disk Cleanup) had ever been run on it.

Even though I almost never use IE10, CCleaner always finds entries in the Internet cache (FF/PM use their own cache folder).

CountMike said:

My friend insists using IObit system care all the time and it invariably screws up his system, has to reinstall his W10 every couple of month.

TairikuOkami said:

Just to add to this interesting discussion, I find it funny, that most people, who do not recommend registry cleaners, never actually used them. Their opinions are based on reviews of people, who used a fake software like from iobit.

I've tried some IObit software (several years ago) and I wasn't impressed.