Are Registry Cleaners Still Needed on Windows 10?

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  1. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #110

    I have no love for CCleaner while I continue to hear many Rave about how wonderful that one is? I prefer to manually remove temp folders and anything else found that no longer has any use rather then allow a 3rd party app to start dumping files it only sees as no longer having any use like select files you just happen to save to a new folder? "Well those aren't in use at the moment and have to go!" would be that type of thinking when it may turn out a Windows or other update you downloaded to save was suddenly found missing when dumped by a 3rd party app?

    Likewise this can happen to entries in the registry and what MS people had been warning about several years ago even! Too many unsure but take your money programs surfaced by the time Vista was out and proceeding 7. The best advice to give anyone still planning to use a cleaner would be to suggest making a backup of the registry before proceeding. With the "crap cleaner" you also want to make sure it doesn't crap your drive either!
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  2. Posts : 1,091
    Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10, Linux, Android, FreeBSD Unix
       #111

    Edwin said:
    K..., I'm gonna put a stop to this!

    I have had negative consequences as a direct result of using a Registry 'cleaner'.

    I have never had negative consequences as a direct result of not using a Registry 'cleaner'!
    Let's just say it's a two way street and this conversation is going to be never ending because as the saying goes, opinions just like bums, everyone has one! One can ask someone to show where a registry helps performance and the other can ask the same to show where not using one doesn't decrease performance. Besides, it depends on what entries were cleaned because empty keys doesn't matter one way or another but what if you inherited some key that runs a process in a loop that uses up the resources of the computer.
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  3. Posts : 2,832
    Windows 10 Pro X64
       #112

    Hi,

    I have no love for CCleaner while I continue to hear many Rave about how wonderful that one is?
    I didn't want to down talk CCleaner. It's about the only program of its kind I don't mind the people I assist maintaining their puters to use. It's pretty much harmless when left to its default settings and it reduces my workload whenever I'm called upon to fix something.

    rather then allow a 3rd party app to start dumping files it only sees as no longer having any use like select files you just happen to save to a new folder? "Well those aren't in use at the moment and have to go!"
    Surely that should never happen. If you run a program that does pull that off then junk it ASAP I'd say.

    The best advice to give anyone still planning to use a cleaner would be to suggest making a backup of the registry before proceeding
    I wouldn't recommend any of these tools if they'd not make a backup prior to any changes automatically. When after that all turns out to be fine you can delete these backups anyway.
    Using crappy "Cleaners" is most certainly counterproductive for sure.

    Which begs the question: What are the fav tools for these tasks ?

    Cheers,
    Last edited by fdegrove; 31 Dec 2015 at 02:39.
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  4. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #113

    I wasn't looking to down play CCleaner in particular but from being a dual purpose type app that does get into the registry that made a good illustration as to how dependency on these types of apps has seen negative results at times whether or not people have even realized the actual source of a problem they may have had from using one. Actually I have CCleaner installed but never even used on 10. The need for it simply isn't there.

    When seeing these you buy to correct registry deals I will recommend avoiding those types since they tend to be scam wares simply geared to take in money but can never actually deliver on the "Guaranteed solutions" end of the deal. Some like RegCure and RegistryCleaner are two that get bad reviews.

    Eusing on the other hand generally saw fair and positive reviews for a program that was known to be a bit more reliable when used often. Better softwares however came about where companies started providing special removers for cleaning up any leftover entries from their own trialwares, sharewares when people tried them out. That eliminated the need for clean up tool to locate and remove the leftovers from uninstalled programs that lacked uninstallers which there are still a good number out there.

    The Programs & Features option in the Control Panel was a much needed improvement that first came with Vista to replace the old XP Add/Remove Programs since that wouldn't record all entries and seek and destroy when going to remove some app. XP as well as the rest of the older ME/2000 and Legacy versions simply lacked in that area. MS has made progress in these areas as well as having added the DiskCleanup tool years ago to also progress further from XP when bringing that in as well as the Windows.old folder for saving your personal files when either upgrading or replacing one version or Windows installation with another in the case of a problematic install or malware.

    As for favorite apps that would fall under Windows Explorer now File Explorer for manually backing things up or tracking things down like useless temp folders and seeing them dumped along with any downloaded files like older freeware utilities no longer having any use over depending on any 3rd party cleaners. Manual edits of the registry have to be done with caution by experienced hands only to avoid trashing Windows of course. As a rule however I never seem to have any real need for any of the cleaner mentioned.
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  5. Posts : 696
    Windows 10 Build 14267
       #114

    CCleaner is still my friend !

    :)
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  6. Posts : 27,164
    Win11 Pro, Win10 Pro N, Win10 Home, Windows 8.1 Pro, Ubuntu
       #115

    fdegrove said:
    Hi,



    Could be one of the Powertoys. I honestly don't remember for certain.
    Either that one, Resource kit or even one of the Sysinternals applets. Either way, it's ages ago, likely around 96 or so.

    Cheers,
    Do you mean this?:
    Metrics of performance benefit[edit]

    On Windows 9x computers, it was possible that a very large registry could slow down the computer's start-up time. However this is less of an issue with NT-based operating systems (including Windows XP and Vista), due to a different on-disk structure of the registry, improved memory management and indexing.[12] Furthermore, versions of Windows prior to Server 2003 may fail to start up, if the registry and kernel files are unable to fit within the first 16M of memory.[13] Slowdown due to registry bloat is thus far less of an issue in modern versions of Windows.

    Conversely, defragmenting the underlying registry files (e.g. using the free Microsoft-supported PageDefrag tool),[14] rather than attempting to clean the Registry's contents, has a measureable benefit and has therefore been recommended in the past by experts such as Mark Russinovich. (A form of defragmentation capability is built directly into Windows since Vista.[clarification needed])

    The Windows Performance Toolkit is specifically designed to troubleshoot performance-related issues under Windows, and it does not include Registry cleaning as one of its optimizations.[15]
    RegDelNull v1.1

    By Mark Russinovich
    Published: November 1, 2006
    Download RegDelNull (44 KB)
    Rate:


    C:\>regdelnull hklm -sRegDelNull v1.10 - Delete Registry keys with embedded Nulls

    Copyright (C) 2005-2006 Mark Russinovich
    Sysinternals - Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources
    Null-embedded key (Nulls are replaced by '*'):
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Systems Internals\Can't touch me!*
    Delete (y/n) y
    Scan complete.
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  7. Posts : 630
       #116

    Almighty1 said:
    Let's just say it's a two way street and this conversation is going to be never ending because as the saying goes, opinions just like bums, everyone has one! One can ask someone to show where a registry helps performance and the other can ask the same to show where not using one doesn't decrease performance. Besides, it depends on what entries were cleaned because empty keys doesn't matter one way or another but what if you inherited some key that runs a process in a loop that uses up the resources of the computer.
    I agree with you on almost all of what you say, except for the part about empty keys don't matter. The main problem with Windows (over time) is that keys are added on, and while they may not do anything. Windows still has to read through all of those keys, which does take extra time.

    Why do you hear people say, that Windows slows down over time? It does just because (in part) as the above says. It is the same concept as searching for something. If you search for something on 1 entry as opposed to several hundred thousand, obviously the search on one entry will be much faster. So, removing all of those useless keys IMO does help. If you don't need them, get rid of them. I like a tidy closet.
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  8. Posts : 2,832
    Windows 10 Pro X64
       #117

    Hi,
    @CliffS: No, not that one although it was useful too in its day.

    This is the one I had in mind:

    http://www.pcworld.com/product/946275/regclean-.html

    Please don't use it on a current machine as it really wasn't written for these.

    Cheers,
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  9. Posts : 27,164
    Win11 Pro, Win10 Pro N, Win10 Home, Windows 8.1 Pro, Ubuntu
       #118

    fdegrove said:
    Hi,
    @CliffS: No, not that one although it was useful too in its day.

    This is the one I had in mind:

    http://www.pcworld.com/product/946275/regclean-.html

    Please don't use it on a current machine as it really wasn't written for these.

    Cheers,
    Ahhhh! I remember that one:) Ancient. I never used it though as I didn't know much about the registry then as I do now.
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  10. Posts : 19,516
    W11+W11 Developer Insider + Linux
       #119

    Trust_No1 said:
    The main problem with Windows (over time) is that keys are added on, and while they may not do anything. Windows still has to read through all of those keys, which does take extra time.
    No, not any more except for manual searches maybe. Just like programs that don't run linear any more which was the case with higher level languages.
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