Re: If Registry Cleaners are no good then....

Edward W. Thompson wrote:


I am afraid many would consider an endorsement by Microsoft to be a paradox. :-).


It _is_ a two-edged sword, at times. ;-}


With respect to the subject, I would not debate the benefits of Registry Cleaners with respect to their claimed improvement of machine performance, however, they do clean up what would otherwise be a bloated file, due to an excessive number of redundant entries, if you are in the habit of installing and uninstalling software, as many do.


This is true, but the amount of hard drive space involved is virtually microscopic. The word "bloat" is, in my experience, a huge exaggeration.


You claim that Registry Managers, as a class, will damage the OS. I specifically cite the OS as the claim is made by you and other that the use of a Registry Manager will ultimately render the machine 'unbootable'. None
of the Registry Cleaners I have used have caused such a problem and I have used one or another of these 'cleaners' for several years (Win95 onwards). Please spare me the jibe that I have been lucky! Perhaps you would educate me, and maybe others, to advise which of the many Registry Cleaners actually do damage the Registry to the extent the machine becomes unbootable, you appear to have this information. What Registry Cleaners may do is to remove, or advise the removal, of empty Registry keys that are sometimes required by some Programs. This may then cause those programs not to function. If that occurs it is not difficult to make such Registry entries as 'exclusions', most Registry Cleaner programs allow exclusions to be made. If a Registry Cleaning program is shown to damage the OS, I am surprised that the authors of such programs would not have corrected such errors.




I don't recall anyone ever saying that the use of a registry cleaner *will invariably* damage the OS or render machine unusable. Rather, we have pointed out that the potential risk is there, and it just foolish to run such a risk when there is no measurable benefit to be derived from the use of such products.



With respect to repairing any damage a Registry Cleaner may do, simply restoring the Registry either by the means incorporated in most, if not all, Registry 'Cleaner' programs does that. There is also 'System Restore' (Ugh!) and ERUNT to allow to recover from Registry problems. There is no 'expertise' required here. .



You've never met an average home computer user, have you? If you had, you'd know that very few will heed warnings to make backups or allow the application to do so.


As you and others regularly caution, common sense requires that anyone making changes to Registry either by using a 'Cleaner' or by 'manually editing' (Regedit et al) must ensure they can reversed changes made in the event of a problem arising.




Sadly, though, common sense is very uncommon.

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Bruce Chambers

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Relevant Pages

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