Any decent registry cleaning programs?

I tried CCleaner and it did an okay job but QuickSys Registry Cleaner is what I ended up using instead. It did a much better job. I got QuickSys from http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ actually.

Very thorough, good interface, clearcut explanations of everything, and it found about 1000 errors more than CCleaner.

Look, I am just one of those stubborn people who refuse to format and believe that I can fix everything if I spend enough time at it. I am adept at fixing windows rot and I can spot malware doing something from a mile away. Man, I just saved this system from a Virus.Win32.Virut (encrypts every exe on your system it gets its hands on replacing them with corrupted versions of itself, corrupts your ntldr, your boot.ini, etc.) which most people simply give up and format when they encounter that. I like and enjoy doing this. :) I spend more time tinkering with windows than playing games in the past month.

Nothing more satisfying than windows bluescreening so badly you can't even get into safemode...and then somehow reviving that system and seeing it load again after you've replaced all the core windows files by hand! :) Windows Repair? Don't need it. System Restore? I just do it myself! (goto the system volume information folder, grab the registry hives from inside the restore point snapshots manually)

Anyway, thanks for the tips, I will keep CCleaner around but I've found a few more programs that were much better than it.
 
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So what on earth are you doing to be collecting that much malware... I think I'd know the answer but if you'd know enough how to replace registry keys I'd expect you'd know how to avoid infections in the first place.
 
I guess another question I've got for the OP and anyone else commenting on it... Why do you feel the need to clean your registry, and what OS are you running?
The need to do so practically vanished in Windows Vista, and even moreso in 7.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Look, I am just one of those stubborn people who refuse to format and believe that I can fix everything if I spend enough time at it. I am adept at fixing windows rot and I can spot malware doing something from a mile away. Man, I just saved this system from a Virus.Win32.Virut (encrypts every exe on your system it gets its hands on replacing them with corrupted versions of itself, corrupts your ntldr, your boot.ini, etc.) which most people simply give up and format when they encounter that. I like and enjoy doing this. :) I spend more time tinkering with windows than playing games in the past month.

Nothing more satisfying than windows bluescreening so badly you can't even get into safemode...and then somehow reviving that system and seeing it load again after you've replaced all the core windows files by hand! :) Windows Repair? Don't need it. System Restore? I just do it myself! (goto the system volume information folder, grab the registry hives from inside the restore point snapshots manually)
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I'm of the same mind.......as long as I have the time (or someone is paying for the time), but even I admit sometimes a fresh install is the best option.

TechieSooner said:
I guess another question I've got for the OP and anyone else commenting on it... Why do you feel the need to clean your registry, and what OS are you running?
The need to do so practically vanished in Windows Vista, and even moreso in 7.
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I mostly see XP right now ( FINALLY stopped seeing Win98/ME - woohoo!)........and vista by a smallish margin.
 
Monkey34 said:
I'm of the same mind.......as long as I have the time (or someone is paying for the time), but even I admit sometimes a fresh install is the best option.



I mostly see XP right now ( FINALLY stopped seeing Win98/ME - woohoo!)........and vista by a smallish margin.
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XP and earlier I understand a little registry cleaning I guess... Anything after that it's just a practice in futility (unless there's a key that's wrong or something that needs to be manually fixed).
 
I still use a reg cleaner with Vista and Windows 7, but it isn't for regular maintenaince. I only use it when I uninstall software, to make sure it is fully removed.
 
This has really peaked my interest since this thread, the more i think about it the more i feel "registry cleaners" are snake oil.

does anyone have an actual instance where cleaning the registry has increased performance behond it maybe stopping malware from running?

it seems the benchmark for these registry cleaners are the number of bad entries it finds. (kindfo an odd benchmark)
 
H-street said:
does anyone have an actual instance where cleaning the registry has increased performance behond it maybe stopping malware from running?
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Maybe I missed something earlier in the thread, but cleaning the registry has never been about performance.
 
H-street said:
This has really peaked my interest since this thread, the more i think about it the more i feel "registry cleaners" are snake oil.

does anyone have an actual instance where cleaning the registry has increased performance behond it maybe stopping malware from running?

it seems the benchmark for these registry cleaners are the number of bad entries it finds. (kindfo an odd benchmark)
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You hit the nail on the head- the point I've been making. There's really no benefit to it.

That said, XP and earlier... We all know the registry can get to the point where it'll cause errors and screw stuff up. That's why XP and earlier, it'll act more like preventative maintenance than anything else. Performance gains are about nill (XP might take a little bit longer when loading up your extension list, for example...)
 
TechieSooner said:
So what on earth are you doing to be collecting that much malware... I think I'd know the answer but if you'd know enough how to replace registry keys I'd expect you'd know how to avoid infections in the first place.
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My Bitdefender Subscription expired about a year ago and I neglected to get a resident scanner out of laziness.

I'm using Avast now and Dr. Web and MalwareBytes for regular scanning which I would recommend.

I have no idea how I got the most recent infections, it's been a long time since I've had a bad case of malware...well actually Virut was a full blown virus that may have come from a network share or flash drive

There are no performance gains to cleaning the registry, it's just maintenance to prevent errors or in bad cases to clean out old conflicting drivers. I would say the most important reason is for dealing with programs have have embedded themselves in your startup or start up services you are unaware of. Once you catch them and remove them, I'd still go and make sure the registry is clean of them or many other programs that you goto uninstall but they actually leave traces here and there.

For me, this registry cleaning was vital because I had just moved a primary harddrive with XP SP2 partition from an AMD X2 system on NF4 chipset straight and directly into an Intel P45 chipset with C2Q. I doubt most of you would be crazy enough to do that. Like I've said before, I'm running the same install of windows that I have since I installed XP almost 10 years ago. There are hundreds of drivers and programs and services and other hooks long gone that I just want to be rid of.

If this stuff is really gone in Vista/7, I welcome it and will probably be running a triple boot with 7 installation on an SSD sometime in the future.
 
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I barely touch my registry and the system runs as snappy as its initial install, under Vista or Win7.
 
Spare-Flair said:
I have no idea how I got the most recent infections, it's been a long time since I've had a bad case of malware...
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That right there isn't enough to suggest you never use that install again????

Spare-Flair said:
I would say the most important reason is for dealing with programs have have embedded themselves in your startup or start up services you are unaware of.
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MSCONFIG shows you what's written in these areas... So again, what exactly are the benefits to cleaning the registry every so often?

I really don't see any advantage to it. It's actually more dangerous. Most people know the more you jack around with Windows the more it screws up. That applies here, too.
You do it to PREVENT errors yet in using some of these deeper cleaners, you can cause more than you'd ever prevented. Is it not more efficient and less risky to deal with any errors (that chances are you'll never have) than to scan and remove potential items you may need?


Spare-Flair said:
For me, this registry cleaning was vital because I had just moved a primary harddrive with XP SP2 partition from an AMD X2 system on NF4 chipset straight and directly into an Intel P45 chipset with C2Q. I doubt most of you would be crazy enough to do that.
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Yea, cuz most of us would rather have a system than runs well the way it was intended with very few issues than one that's been patched together.

Not saying it doesn't work, but all that patching and tweaking, especially with the later Windows, will lead to more issues. Not really a question of "if" but "when". This forum is filled with people that thought they could make Windows work to their will instead of doing it the way it was intended to be used. They try it the proper way- and it works! Imagine that.

rflcptr said:
I barely touch my registry and the system runs as snappy as its initial install, under Vista or Win7.
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As it should. People running registry cleaning programs for the heck of it on occasion are just stuck in the past I guess. No use to do that unless you have an actual issue with it.
 
TechieSooner said:
That right there isn't enough to suggest you never use that install again????
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No, why would I want to give up so easily? Why give up and say: "oh well, let's just format and start over" instead of working through it. There are multiple suspects but I've cleaned it out now and I'm pretty sure it won't be coming back. Go look up Win32:Virut and you can see how bad this is and how easily it spreads. It probably came from a flashdrive from a friend. I had run malwarebytes on the drive first but didn't know at the time that strains of Virut are actually buggy themselves and won't be detected or properly cured by many of the most common programs. This install has had a ton of malware over the past decade and I've beaten it every time without having to repair or reformat. I've gotten to the point where core windows or boot partition files are so corrupt that it bluescreens right after posting but I've managed to deal with that too.

MSCONFIG shows you what's written in these areas... So again, what exactly are the benefits to cleaning the registry every so often?
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I use msconfig to check this out and if I see foreign objects, I go investigate it in the registry myself and remove them manually. I use a registry cleaner afterwards just because I am more comfortable with another program going over it once more and giving me a clear list of everything it's detected as possibly faulty or orphaned.

I really don't see any advantage to it. It's actually more dangerous. Most people know the more you jack around with Windows the more it screws up. That applies here, too.
You do it to PREVENT errors yet in using some of these deeper cleaners, you can cause more than you'd ever prevented. Is it not more efficient and less risky to deal with any errors (that chances are you'll never have) than to scan and remove potential items you may need?
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If I've caused any more errors with a deep registry cleaner then I will just revert to a backup. If it works fine, I will stick with it.

Yea, cuz most of us would rather have a system than runs well the way it was intended with very few issues than one that's been patched together.

People running registry cleaning programs for the heck of it on occasion are just stuck in the past I guess. No use to do that unless you have an actual issue with it.
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So if we all should run a system as it was intended, why do people spend all their time trying to modify windows? I hate windows as intended. The reason I don't want to format is everything in my windows is highly modified. I've directly edited a lot of the libraries to replace many of the graphics without using 3rd party programs. I remapped a lot of my keyboard. I have triple boots in my system of various installs of windows and I swap files between them liberally. I've got Vista/7 specific programs and apps that shouldn't be working on XP working on XP. If anything, it'd be better for me to spend my time putting together a BartPE install of Windows that has everything I want but for now I will continue modifying windows and refusing to format and reinstall.

And I did have issues with the registry. Explorer.exe was returning access violation errors because of the registry. I know some of the malware was trying to load files that were nolonger there because I had cleaned out the programs but there were still some registry keys dormant. I know of several programs on my computer where the msiexec failed and they didn't install correctly and will refuse to uninstall unless I go in and clean it up myself.

Not saying it doesn't work, but all that patching and tweaking, especially with the later Windows, will lead to more issues. Not really a question of "if" but "when". This forum is filled with people that thought they could make Windows work to their will instead of doing it the way it was intended to be used. They try it the proper way- and it works! Imagine that.
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This is [H]ardforum. You are trying to tell people that they should just use something as it comes and not try to bend hardware/software to their will? Give me a break! :p Of course it will break eventually, and when it does, I'll do my best to fix it. I'm just tired of the old mantra "just format and reinstall". It's a lazy answer for people that either don't know what they are doing, don't know what is possible, or don't have the time to bother (that is understandable). In the end, all windows is is a collection of files on a drive and a registry that organizes it and registers services and programs to work together. If you know that many of the files that are essential to windows are broken or corrupt or not what you want, you can replace them yourself. If you have a backup of the registry, you can replace that yourself as well. I just like to use a registry cleaner because I am personally quite curious to know exactly what is going on in there and I like to see a list of orphaned keys or programs that nolonger point to anything. QuickSys RegCleaner gave me a fantastic list of these for me to look through. CCleaner didn't even give me a fraction of that. It's not like I just pressed clean and let it go ahead and delete whatever it wanted to delete in my registry.
 
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Heh. I've fought with the "just format" crowd before. Don't try to convince them.....but realize at some point a format may be the better choice.
 
Monkey34 said:
Heh. I've fought with the "just format" crowd before. Don't try to convince them.....but realize at some point a format may be the better choice.
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The day I am forced to format is the day I'll install Windows 7 on another partition and I keep trying to fix XP :cool:
 
Sure the challenge is nice, but apparently your time isn't worth squat. If it was you wouldn't spend an exorbitant amount of time on reverse engineering the virii when it can be accomplished much easier with a format and reload. I can understand sometimes a format isn't the "allowable" option per customer or boss but those that abhor the reload amaze me.
 
I firmly believe registry cleaners are snake oil, but you are all entitled to your opinion. (I've also debugged my fair share of issues where the registry cleaner blew away valuable keys, they thought were worthless.) I would also put the warning out there, that most Registry Cleaners I've seen come by my desk lately are Rogue Trojans...

As to running a hack-o-rama O/S, if it bothers you so much, go buy an XP Embedded license. I would also suggest you take the HDD out, put it another machine and scan the HDD offline, if you're getting Malware from you don't know where...

I would also sysprep that XP install if you swapped from AMD to Intel, that's just brutal.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
Ranma_Sao said:
I firmly believe registry cleaners are snake oil, but you are all entitled to your opinion. (I've also debugged my fair share of issues where the registry cleaner blew away valuable keys, they thought were worthless.) I would also put the warning out there, that most Registry Cleaners I've seen come by my desk lately are Rogue Trojans...

As to running a hack-o-rama O/S, if it bothers you so much, go buy an XP Embedded license. I would also suggest you take the HDD out, put it another machine and scan the HDD offline, if you're getting Malware from you don't know where...

I would also sysprep that XP install if you swapped from AMD to Intel, that's just brutal.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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Why would I listen to someone that posts a bunch of stuff, then tells me that it confers no rights?? :p
 
SlowCobra said:
Sure the challenge is nice, but apparently your time isn't worth squat. If it was you wouldn't spend an exorbitant amount of time on reverse engineering the virii when it can be accomplished much easier with a format and reload. I can understand sometimes a format isn't the "allowable" option per customer or boss but those that abhor the reload amaze me.
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So far it has taken me less time to fix windows everytime anything catastrophic has happened then it would take to reinstall 10 years worth of programs and settings and custom mods to windows.

If I could make my own slipstreamed Bart PE install of Windows that had everything the way it is that I like it, I could go and format and install. That's probably the smarter route that I've never gotten around to doing.

As I'm not doing something for a customer or a client and it's my own system, why shouldn't I spend all the time I want on it to get it right and abhor blanking it to start over?
 
dunno if anyone has tried Registry Life, its free and cleans and optimizes the hives. I have been using it on Windows 7 Pro x64 for a few months now, it does backup before doing anything and you can view keys and statistics. Usually finds alot of the program files I have removed over CCleaner. I found this over at majorgeeks awhile back
 
Spare-Flair said:
No, why would I want to give up so easily? Why give up and say: "oh well, let's just format and start over" instead of working through it. There are multiple suspects but I've cleaned it out now and I'm pretty sureit won't be coming back.
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You answered your own question.
You have no idea where it came from, and since you don't: you don't really know if it's gone or what else it may have done.

That's the point where you format and re-install.

I'd only be comfortable leaving a machine as-is in one circumstance... I have multiple machines with the same infection, I can compare the MD5 signatures on all of the samples, scan the rest of the machine, and based on multiple samples: determine exactly what it does. At that point I contact my Anti-virus vendor, they write the signatures in, and it effectively removes all traces from all machines.
^^^ You cannot do that with most home scenarios at all.

Spare-Flair said:
I use msconfig to check this out and if I see foreign objects, I go investigate it in the registry myself and remove them manually.
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WHY? One of the purposes of Msconfig is to do this.
Have fun doing it manually, but it makes zero sense doing what you're doing.

Spare-Flair said:
If I've caused any more errors with a deep registry cleaner then I will just revert to a backup. If it works fine, I will stick with it.
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Fair enough. But I eliminate the "if" entirely and just don't screw with what was not meant to be screwed with in the first place.

You have to screw with manually modifying, troubleshooting, and possibly restoring the registry, I won't have to. Eliminate the "ifs" entirely by just not jacking with something that would have zero effect on your system.

A file extension entry isn't used, that's an error! Ohhh noooos!!!!!!! My system will never run the same! :rolleyes:


Spare-Flair said:
So if we all should run a system as it was intended, why do people spend all their time trying to modify windows?
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Most people don't. Moot point.

Spare-Flair said:
This is [H]ardforum. You are trying to tell people that they should just use something as it comes and not try to bend hardware/software to their will? Give me a break! :p
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There's a crap ton of novice folk that come on here and read that stuff. Most people on here are also aware of the fact since Vista- you leave your system alone. Folks spending time tweaking services, vLiting the install, etc, etc... they post on here all the time. The suggested advice is usually to run it the way it was intended, and guess what? It works!

Old-school thinking is that you tweak Windows to get it to run better. Guess what- after doing that for decades, Microsoft actually saw what people were doing and adjusted Windows so that it optimizes itself without any user intervention.

SlowCobra said:
Sure the challenge is nice, but apparently your time isn't worth squat.
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How do you figure?
If my time was worth squat then I'd spend time manually tweaking my registry and repairing my computer, instead of taking the faster and more time efficient method of reinstalling or reimaging.

Ranma_Sao said:
I firmly believe registry cleaners are snake oil, but you are all entitled to your opinion.
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^^^ He works for Microsoft, by the way...
 
If the registry is screwed up enough, it's usually easier to just back up and reformat. Granted, your registry shouldn't be screwing up very easily, meaning you should only have to do this due to registry issues once every some odd years. If you're having to reformat every couple months due to registry issues, you're doing something VERY wrong.
 
There's still enough people in the old school Windows world that think they've got to manually prop it up on a peg leg to keep it standing...
Windows 7 is the best Windows yet, it takes care of itself. Use it like it's meant to be used, LEAVE IT ALONE, and it's absolutely amazing how stable and fast it stays.
 
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