Are Registry Cleaners Still Needed on Windows 10?

Few posts back I posted the picture of results of Ccleaner registry scan after many months of heavy computer use and countless programs installed, used and uninstalled (mostly by Revo). You can see number of entries and their type that were cleaned. Next time you use any program like that, observe and check every entry a particular Registry cleaner found before they were cleared. That way everyone can see for him/herself if it could be beneficial to risk it or not. Ccleaner is very mild at cleaning registry and not much of a risk but by same token not very effective.. There are some much more aggressive and potentially dangerous ones but can find more erroneous entries.
As far as term "Snake oil" is concerned, that's easily determined, just have to check results against promises a program makes. For me, Ccleaner (the registry part) didn't do much if any since W7. Many times I knew there were registry entries left that didn't do anything. were bad or otherwise not desirable and Ccleaner didn't find them but I did and corrected them accordingly. Ccleaner is just simply not designed to do that and that doesn't make it exactly Snake oil but not very effective either.
So please people, check the results of registry scan with any program for it and uncheck any entries you are not positive that are detrimental or you don't know it's purpose. You just may skip aggravation if something goes wrong.

TairikuOkami said:

I find somewhat interesting, that most people judging reg cleaners, never actually used them.
It is like saying: "I know it is bad, because I have read that." I prefer facts rather than hearsay.
Like a magnetic bracelet, people and scientists say, that it is nonsense and yet it saved my wrist.

When asked about the benefit of using them you can't find any real proof. Where's the evidence that using one does any good? Like improve the performance? Save space??

All I know for a fact is that not messing with the registry is the best bet. And if for some reason someone does use say, CCleaner, they need to backup the registry first. Or better yet the entire system.

Matthew Wai said:

For years I have been using CCleaner, which has never caused a problem.

Fine,, but what benefit has it been?

Matthew Wai said:

See CCleaner - Use the registry cleaner to repair your registry

That's what they say, I personally haven't seen any of that helping me at any time.

TairikuOkami said:

I find somewhat interesting, that most people judging reg cleaners, never actually used them.
It is like saying: "I know it is bad, because I have read that." I prefer facts rather than hearsay.
Like a magnetic bracelet, people and scientists say, that it is nonsense and yet it saved my wrist.




So you are saying, that if something is free, it is bad? Like Linux, LibreOffice, CCleaner, etc?


I would not touch a reg cleaner, which does not backup registry automatically, but most do.

Those programs you mentioned are NOT Reg Cleaners.
I am not saying that. What I am saying is that they do more harm than goon. Below is what Tim Tibbets from MajorGeeks has to say about them:


Registry Cleaners: There are none. Pause here, please, and remember that. There are many safe, conservative registry cleaners but if you don't know what you're doing, they can be more trouble than they are worth. People are often given the advice to download a registry cleaner by a well-meaning friend, for example. Fixing registry errors have been used for many years as a sales tactic for some applications. It's an easy way to show your computer has "thousands" of problems, when in fact, there are none. Registry cleaners just remove old traces from your registry. These are often left behind from programs that you uninstalled or updated. Your computer will not run any faster by removing old registry entries. The bottom line here? You won’t fix anything, but you might break something.




The Best Drive Cleaners and Registry Cleaners - MajorGeeks

meebers said:

Why do "people" use disk cleanup? The files are there, they hurt nothing, erasing them does not speed up performance blah blah blah!

First off there's a huge difference between cleaning up old files and attempting to 'clean' up a registry. Dead temp files are not needed but there is always the risk of damaging the registry so the PC is no longer usable.

Sorry, but your comparison is apples vs oranges.

meebers said:

Why do "people" use disk cleanup? The files are there, they hurt nothing, erasing them does not speed up performance blah blah blah!

You are trying to compare apples and oranges.