11 replies to this topic

[Luis9955]

Hello everyone, I was just wondering, is it true that the CCleaner registry cleaner is BAD? I've heard ALOT of rumours etc saying not to use the reg cleaner because it only DELETES the entry not actually FIX it.
Is this true? Could anyone confirm this?

(Btw, LOVE CCleaner, thanks for making the program)

-Luis

[Disk4mat]

It does delete orphan entries and will not correct paths or otherwise locate files on your drive and alter the registry values to the found path. If a registry key contains a path that is no longer valid, then CC deletes the key.

Is the cleaner bad? I honestly think it depends on the person using it. Its a tool and you must know how to use it and interpret the items it finds. If you look at the list and assume its 'safe' to remove all items just because CC found them, then sooner or later you will run into trouble.

CC offers an option t omake backups of the registry keys it cleans. Options>Advanced: Show prompt to backup registry issues.

http://www.ccleanerb.../scr/issues.htm

[davey]

Luis9955, on Sep 21 2008, 04:06 PM, said:

Hello everyone, I was just wondering, is it true that the CCleaner registry cleaner is BAD? I've heard ALOT of rumours etc saying not to use the reg cleaner because it only DELETES the entry not actually FIX it.
Is this true? Could anyone confirm this?

(Btw, LOVE CCleaner, thanks for making the program)

-Luis

Hi Luis,
Many people think that Registry programs are Fixers. This is due to misleading advertisement and misinformed word of mouth user-to-user.

When your Registry is broken and needs fixing then you are in serious trouble.
When it happens you will know about it very soon.

CCleaner's Registry issues function is used to identify possible "issues". The user then decides what to do about these "issues". Removing these "issues" can result in saving some bytes here and there and resulting in a smaller Registry when compacted.
"Advanced Users" that do a lot of software testing and these users benefit the most from using this.
MOST users get very little benefit from such use and risk getting themselves into trouble.
MOST users are best advised to leave the Registry alone. It is an area for "specific users" to investigate.

I agree with you. CCleaner is the best, safest and quickest PC "cleaner" there is.
Celebration!!! see this link. http://www.pcpro.co....x.php?pageId=16

Best wishes,
davey

[admsupport]

davey, on Sep 22 2008, 01:49 PM, said:

MOST users get very little benefit from such use and risk getting themselves into trouble.
MOST users are best advised to leave the Registry alone. It is an area for "specific users" to investigate.

Hi davey,

I agree with you.

If the author of this post is only looking for a safe way to "defrag" his registry (for what is worth); here is a reliable (and safe) link to do so. http://www.larsheder...nline.de/erunt/

[Luis9955]

Are you trying to say Im a basic user? Cos I aint. I know how to do stuff when I want to do stuff. All Im sayin is is there a way to get CCleaner to FIX the value instead of REMOVING the value.

[Disk4mat]

The short answer is no. CC will only delete the value and not fix it. If you want to fix the items as opposed to remove, in CC you can right click each item and select 'Open in Regedit'. Fixing becomes a DIY.

[davey]

admsupport, on Sep 22 2008, 08:38 AM, said:

Hi davey,

I agree with you.

If the author of this post is only looking for a safe way to "defrag" his registry (for what is worth); here is a reliable (and safe) link to do so. http://www.larsheder...nline.de/erunt/

No, I do not think that the member is looking to "defrag" the Registry which is a very special task in itself.
You will find many, many users using ERUNT to backup the Registry and NTREGOPT to compact the Registry just as you have said. Thanks for the reminder and link.

I think the member is concerned that CCleaner does not "fix" the Registry.
I don't know of any reliable,safe Registry programs that actually "fix" a Registry entry. I do know that I would never trust a program to do that.
All that would be accomplished is "changing" an entry, not "fixing" it in any fashion. You would still be left with an "issue" that needs to be reviewed.

davey

[Quatermass]

The best way to defrag the registry is to download the free pagedefrag program by Microsoft (used to be owned by sysinternals but they made so many great free IT tools that Microsoft bought them). It's a nice simply IT tool and doesn't need to be installed. You just put it in a place on your c: drive where it can permanently live and set the options for the program to get to work when you next reboot.

I would suggest any one wishing to do a defrag or registry clean of any nature that they ensure they have a fault free hard drive first.
Open the command prompt and do a cmd <return> followed by CHKDSK /F C:

Then press Y at the prompts.

Then reboot and see your machine check and repair the hard drive filing system so its in top shape.

When you first run pagedefrag it may take a while to defrag your large pagefile if its heavily fragmented. But after that its like ~4 secs per boot.

I run pagedefrag on over 20 Windows PCs for over 5 years now. Like I said, it's free and used by IT professionals everywhere.

Get it and more details here:
http://technet.micro...e/cc137806.aspx

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/PageDefrag

[Andavari]

Quatermass, on Sep 23 2008, 03:08 AM, said:

I would suggest any one wishing to do a defrag or registry clean of any nature that they ensure they have a fault free hard drive first.

I've been using PageDefrag for years and long enough to make my own installer for it. It does do some quick error checking with ChkDsk to insure there aren't any errors.

PageDefrag Help File"pagedfrg.hlp" said:

Immediately after CHKDSK examines your hard drives PageDefrag uses the standard file defragmentation APIs

[Quatermass]

Andavari, on Sep 23 2008, 10:59 PM, said:

It does do some quick error checking with ChkDsk to insure there aren't any errors.

Are you sure about this? Because I don't believe it does (I can't see how it would be able to do this either) and can't find any reference to it on the Sysinternal forum.

[Andavari]

Quatermass, on Sep 25 2008, 06:05 AM, said:

Are you sure about this? Because I don't believe it does (I can't see how it would be able to do this either) and can't find any reference to it on the Sysinternal forum.

It's in the included help file, and is quoted exactly in my previous post. Although I myself have been wondering for years how it can use ChkDsk so fast that it's not even noticeable, nonetheless it has never caused any issues.

[Quatermass]

Andavari, on Sep 25 2008, 06:35 PM, said:

It's in the included help file, and is quoted exactly in my previous post. Although I myself have been wondering for years how it can use ChkDsk so fast that it's not even noticeable, nonetheless it has never caused any issues.

Ah right I understand where you're coming from now. When the PC boots up, CHKDSK^* does a 'dirty' check. It basically checks a tiny flag on the drive. This takes mere milliseconds.

Each time you boot up and run Windows, the OS flags the drive as dirty. When you shutdown cleanly it marks the drive as clean.

Therefore, in theory, if your computer suffers a major crash the system will boot up as 'dirty' and so CHKDSK will do a scan. Needless to say it rarely works...

So everytime you boot up if it's dirty, it does a CHKDSK scan, if not the next program runs in the autorun registy entry. Which in this case is PageDefrag.

Check out the Chkntfs.exe program in Windows XP and above. This allows you to set or clear the Dirty flag.


Every month I run a simply one line batch file via the Scheduler.

ECHO Y|CHKDSK c: /f

This forces a dirty flag on the drive.
If everyone did a dirty check once a month, their computer would work better....


_{*Technically CHKDSK isn't involved at all, as the Autochk program checks the dirty flag and runs CHKDSK if it is set.}