Re: Registry cleaner / repair for win xp

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

You can have a program on your machine that's not installed can't you? If you
download a program file, it's a .exe until you run the file, right? At that
point it's an installed file. That's what I'm saying.
--
dk7195


"Bruce Chambers" wrote:

> dk7195 wrote:
> > What started me thinking about a registry cleaner is this; About a week or so
> > ago, I noticed that each time I clicked a link in a mail message, it would
> > start AOL instead of opening an IE page like it normally does. I had AOL on
> > this machine but had never installed it or activated it. So I uninstalled the
> > AOL program hoping to solve the problem. Then I started getting the following
> > error message at startup: ZHOTKEY HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM AND NEEDS TO
> > CLOSE. Now, the links in email messages are dead. They won't do anything at
> > all. They won't open a new window - nothing. Someone said zhotkey is a
> > registry key, so I thought a registry repair / cleaner might be the solution.
> > I don't notice any other symptoms and if I use Yahoo mail, the links in
> > messages work fine.
>
>
> What do you mean by "I had AOL on this machine but had never installed
> it?" The sentence is completely self-contradictory. Either AOL was
> installed, or it wasn't. Judging by the symptoms exhibited after your
> attempted removal of AOL, I'm inclined to think that it was installed,
> even if you didn't use it and don't have an AOL account.
>
> Sadly, the only practical way I've ever found to completely remove
> AOL from an operating system is to format the hard drive and perform a
> clean installation. I absolutely loathe having to resort to a hard
> drive format to fix what should be a relatively minor issue, but it
> takes a lot less time than manually removing/replacing all of the
> Windows system files that AOL replaces with their own proprietary
> versions and the hundreds of unnecessary registry entries.
>
>
> --
>
> Bruce Chambers
>
> Help us help you:
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>
> You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
> both at once. - RAH
>
.

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