Registry Cleaner for WinXP Pro...

ST Dragon · Post by **ST Dragon** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:44 pm

Hi,
I would like to scan & clean my WinXp Pro registry from all the garbage which will have undoubtfully gathered over the past 2 years!

So, which do you guys recommend? A free one preferably...

Thanks in advance.

Post by **Icarus** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:52 pm

CCleaner.
And some diligence in maintaining your own system.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:37 pm

2 years and you havent wiped your system and re-installed?

you might want to give that some thought....

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:50 pm

Do not use a registry cleaner. Do not use CCleaner's registry functions.
Do what jonny5 Alive suggests and transfer your files to a temporary location (if you have even 2 XP boxes it's easy, and it's still pretty easy if you have a Vista machine somewhere, if it's patched up that is, just need to change the workgroup name from MSHOME to WORKGROUP on the XP bocks) and reformat your PC.

If you quickly format your PC and then immediately start with the patching, you'll have a much cleaner install that any "registry fixer" can provide. What's more, I find that the OS itself runs better because you aren't applying updates on top of messed-up OS configurations; you can get the system configured the way you want once all the updates are applied.

I've tried reg cleaners throughout the years, including CCleaner a few times and most recently in July/August this year, and all they bring is pain and suffering. At best they waste your time.

The modern registry structure does not slow down your PC and the registry itself doesn't take up all that much space. Misconfigured registry entries can mess with your PC, but CCleaner actually doesn't know what the fuck to do with them - it generally just removes or redirects entries based on best guesses.

jonny5 · Post by **jonny5** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:21 am

i wipe, format and reinstall windows every 4-6 months max......i try and keep everything backed up.....i have tons of external drive space.....

but i like to keep my windows fresh and fast.....and wiping is the easiest and most painless way to keep it that way

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:05 am

That, and there really isn't any safe way to get rid of the odd bits of gunk and cruft that build up in the system over time. You want a clean registry, you wipe the system.

It does cost a lot of money in terms of your time to do, but you don't need to actually go out and spend money for a program (registry cleaner) that won't really help anyway.

ED-057 · Post by **ED-057** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:28 am

That, and there really isn't any safe way to get rid of the odd bits of gunk and cruft that build up in the system over time.

You make it sound like we're dealing with a living organism

croikle · Post by **croikle** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:50 am

Most doctors recommend you back up your memories and start from scratch with a new body every 70-80 years.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 5:52 am

ED-057 wrote:
That, and there really isn't any safe way to get rid of the odd bits of gunk and cruft that build up in the system over time.
You make it sound like we're dealing with a living organism :?

Sure seems like it: The OS is made by people, and it's inhabited - infected if you will - by various programs which themselves have distinct characteristics changing from version to version.

If it makes you feel better, your PC won't eat you, at least not just yet. The tech for breaking down animal protein for robots doesn't have much of an application yet.

themachinist · Post by **themachinist** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:38 am

A newly reformatted system feels sooo gooooood. So fast, so smooth.

Post by **Ghegs** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:00 am

themachinist wrote:A newly reformatted system feels sooo gooooood. So fast, so smooth.

Indeed it does. What I did long while ago was make a fresh install, then create an image out of it. So when it's time to start fresh I just format the harddrive, restore the image and presto! Fresh install in 20 minutes.

LaserGun · Post by **LaserGun** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:56 pm

Are registry cleaners that bad? I haven't had any problems from my experience using them, CCleaner has just deleted old bulk left over from uninstalls and other crap, it also let's you back up registry files before deleting them anyway so if anything goes wrong you can just add them back, also I've noticed my PC has ran smoother and hasn't experienced any nasty lag since cleaning out my registry.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 7:33 pm

LaserGun wrote:Are registry cleaners that bad?

Yep.

A quick rundown, if you want more details read this great article by Ed Bott (2005 but still current):

- Placebo effect: "I cleaned it, so it's faster!" Another possibility: Were you offloading lots of programs beforehand? I would not be surprised if something else accounts for your perceived time savings. I read one guy who wrote that he checks out the time it takes for the New menu to show up when right-clicking on the Desktop (shows a bunch of file types you can create), but if you have too many file types registered there's a safer way to take care of that (although probably a bit more technical than just hitting SCAN + FIX, ohnoz).

- Time wasting: When I was a teenager and younger I thought it was neat watching Win95/98 move those blocks around in Defrag. Then, they slowly started paring down the interface up to XP's colored graph, and I was disappointed. Then it dawned on me that what matters is not moving those blocks around; it's the performance and time saving that counts.

If you're cleaning for the sake of cleaning you're just wasting your time and making it more likely you'll commit some error that will screw you over later. If I can get away without poking my head into a lion's mouth every Tuesday, I'm happier.

- Size savings: The registry is not that big, even nowadays it should only be a few megabytes, which is nothing (especially since those keys just sit there unviewed most of the time). Extra keys aren't sucking down extra CPU cycles, and even if it were all loaded into RAM you have more than enough memory to deal with it.

If you delete a hundred registry entries (that sounds like a lot!) imagine that each key is about a kilobyte - they should be far less since they're just a string specifying a location in the registry, a small bit of data (usually a single byte), a few flags and a name. So 100 * 1K = 100K for your amazing Registry-cleaning haul that took half a minute (it gets to be significantly more or less depending on the system hardware and the complexity of its registry) to scan through.

If a program says it finds an unused DLL, you're saving probably less than 500K. I have hundreds of photos and screenshots and whathaveyou on my drives much bigger than that.

Of course, you can always go run this program and prove me wrong (if you have Win2K - if you have XP or Vista I wouldn't run it, but there should be something similar).

If you have a 1GB registry, however, I shudder to think how much time it'll take to sort through THAT Gordian knot.

- Naive cleaning: One thing about CCleaner that should throw up red flags for you is that you will often find newly abandoned keys immediately after cleaning (this was certainly the case a few months ago). CCleaner apparently works by finding keys for which it can't find something to tie into the OS, but neither it, or you, the end-user, realize that some keys are hard to track back to their source on purpose, or don't contain any data, or violate any of the other supposed registry norms that it assumes will be true 100% of the time.

- "Registry cleaners" can't touch many important areas affecting speed. If you are getting amazing speed increases from registry cleaners, you'll probably get a boost again by wiping the OS installation and starting new. That'll clean out misconfigured variables, and deprecated / obsolete / long uninstalled startup programs or entries that "registry cleaners" can't touch.

How to avoid the need for registry cleaners, then?

Don't install tons of programs, and don't let multimedia applications register a boatload of file types. Set file types you want to use with a program manually (saves lots of time and aggravation sifting through the Open With menu that way).

I suppose you can use System Restore or registry backups, but I usually find those useless, alongside some confusion about how they deal with wayward programs installed after the point was made. I wait to make any system restore point until after I've configured a system the way I want it on first installation, and don't allocate more hard drive space than is needed for maybe two such points.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:11 pm

Small addendum -

Wikipedia actually has a good article on this business: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registry_cleaner
I didn't know the bit about the .NET Application Framework giving applications a new way to store important information. That's nice and much appreciated.

It also reminded me about PageDefrag, which is nice to have. You only need to run that once: Set your desired Page File size - make the maximum and minimum amount the same, set it to the amount recommended by Windows, then run PageDefrag at the next boot. Check in the graphical Defrag app that there's a single big block of green (this will be the page file), not two or more.

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:38 am

There is one issue that I can confirm that CCleaner will come in handy. Sometimes, the DVD drive would stop recognizing any disc. And it's not too rare, happened to my brother-in-law at least twice, and to me once; seems to have something to do with a certain disc-burning software. Anyway, you can hunt down a certain obscure registry entry and remove it, or just let CCleaner fix it.

Also, CCleaner removes the temporary files that Windows sometimes misses; seriously, the first time I ran it on my father's machine, it removed over two gigs of junk, I swear to "Bob"!

ED-057 · Post by **ED-057** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 5:39 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:
ED-057 wrote:You make it sound like we're dealing with a living organism
Sure seems like it

Not to me it doesn't. These infestations you speak of are just files with a registry entry or a line in a configuration file somewhere causing them to load. It can all be undone, the challenge is knowing what to modify and how.

Run regedit and go to local machine - software - microsoft - windows - current version - run. Then remove some/all the junk in there and you're well on the way to having a slim (relatively speaking) OS again. Check also, the Programs/Startup folder.

Lastly, if I were going to reinstall I would just boot to a command prompt and delete the WINNT directory, then restart with the Windows CD in and run the install. It would save a lot of time backing up and restoring all my apps and data. Reformatting is only necessary if there is some worm/virus/malware that needs to be purged.

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:44 am

ED-057 wrote:Run regedit and go to local machine - software - microsoft - windows - current version - run. Then remove some/all the junk in there and you're well on the way to having a slim (relatively speaking) OS again. Check also, the Programs/Startup folder.

More easily done via "Start -> Run -> msconfig".

Also, disable paging file before drive defragmentation. Then enable it again. And always keep it the same size.

ArmoredCore · Post by **ArmoredCore** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:45 am

how would i clean my laptop that hasnt been cl;eaned for a year? i have no windows Cd, no kind of back up cd, i noly have one computer my laptop, whe i bought it windows xp already in the laptop and all that was already on the computer. it seems slower now, i have some games that run slower than before without adding any programs. i have like three 1 gig games on it that i dont wanna lose. how do i back up my stuff than reformat without a windows cd? how do i save my games and music with nbothing to transfer to (another comp, usb drive etc). would like some help myself im computer illiterate lol

ED-057 · Post by **ED-057** » Sat Oct 18, 2008 9:05 am

how do i back up my stuff than reformat without a windows cd?

With win9x and earlier you could put the install files right on the harddrive and run it without CDs or floppies (some laptops shipped like this). Don't know about XP though.

how do i save my games and music with nbothing to transfer to

I would use an external harddrive. USB2 to IDE/SATA adaptors are only $20 now.

SAM · Post by **SAM** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:47 pm

Well, you should just export your whole restery when your PC was just up and running, and store it save. When you want to clean up, just import it back.