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Registry Cleaner


Linda Sands

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That's actually a rather good one and doesn't produce too many false positives.

How does Registry Mechanic stack up with the registry section of Easy Cleaner?

 

I suppose with both of them you still need to be rather careful and have a pretty good idea of what you're doing. I doubt if either one is a wholesale "fix and repair" solution.

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How does Registry Mechanic stack up with the registry section of Easy Cleaner?

 

I suppose with both of them you still need to be rather careful and have a pretty good idea of what you're doing. I doubt if either one is a wholesale "fix and repair" solution.

The registry cleaning is more thorough than EasyCleaner. With Registry Mechanic there's still some stuff that it will find that I won't remove, and I just right click those entries to tell it to never list them again.

 

You're correct neither will fix everything, however many "so-called" errors in the registry can be ignored.

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The registry cleaning is more thorough than EasyCleaner. With Registry Mechanic there's still some stuff that it will find that I won't remove, and I just right click those entries to tell it to never list them again.

 

You're correct neither will fix everything, however many "so-called" errors in the registry can be ignored.

So, Andavari, would you say that Registry Mechanic is a worthwhile item to have in your computer "tool-belt?"

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So, Andavari, would you say that Registry Mechanic is a worthwhile item to have in your computer "tool-belt?"

Yes I would, it's thorough enough without causing system-wide havoc. It can also create backups two-fold i.e.; it's own proprietary backup and a system restore point. You still need to be careful about removing stuff you don't know about though, however I've got my install configured to ignore some stuff that I don't ever want removed and now I can use it without any concerns.

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Yes I would, it's thorough enough without causing system-wide havoc. It can also create backups two-fold i.e.; it's own proprietary backup and a system restore point. You still need to be careful about removing stuff you don't know about though, however I've got my install configured to ignore some stuff that I don't ever want removed and now I can use it without any concerns.

 

 

Hey guys..

 

LOVE THE NEW CCleaner, And been using it for years..I suspect my pc is running a bit slow so ill get a HJT log soon. Keep up the awesome work guys! :):):) I visit the board several times a day, but frankally was scared to sign up and post, lol

 

Matt

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Yes I would, it's thorough enough without causing system-wide havoc. It can also create backups two-fold i.e.; it's own proprietary backup and a system restore point. You still need to be careful about removing stuff you don't know about though, however I've got my install configured to ignore some stuff that I don't ever want removed and now I can use it without any concerns.

When using any registry cleaner, how do you begin to interpret all of the registry keys. Some are more obvious than others, but many of them consist of a path along with a whole bunch of characters and number -- and sometimes bracketed with { }? It seems like these are almost meaningless. How do you know if they're safe to delete -- or if you should leave them alone?

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Stay away from most registry cleaners. They cause more problems than they are worth.(one wrong deletion and windows wont boot... not worth the risk for an almost or completely unnoticeable optimization if you ask me.)

 

You got that right. The only Registry clearn (besides CCleaner) that I've had no problems with is Registry Mechanic. I ran another utility that was called Windows Advanced Care (which has a registry cleaner), and it messed up my registry because i had problems (such as blue screens since i disabled auto restart on system failure) that were registry related.

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When using any registry cleaner, how do you begin to interpret all of the registry keys. Some are more obvious than others, but many of them consist of a path along with a whole bunch of characters and number -- and sometimes bracketed with { }? It seems like these are almost meaningless. How do you know if they're safe to delete -- or if you should leave them alone?

Actually you can't interpret every little thing they list, and some of the stuff will lead you on a wild goose chase trying to track down what they (registry cleaners in general) want to remove.

 

That bracketed crap is the stuff I always hate and you should find out what it is before trustingly deleting it. If only Microsoft would've never made the registry, I so much more prefer .INI files over it's usage.

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Agreed. I managed to get the free vnunet download of Reg Mechanic a while back too and I wouldn't be without it now.

I just installed Registry Mechanic and on my first scan had about 500+ entires in the "Custom Controls" section. Is it safe to just repair/delete all of these, or do I need to be a little more discretionary than that?

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I just installed Registry Mechanic and on my first scan had about 500+ entires in the "Custom Controls" section. Is it safe to just repair/delete all of these, or do I need to be a little more discretionary than that?

I would be a little bit more careful than that, it took me many months before I trusted it completely and allowed it to remove everything. I basically deleted the entries I was confident were safe, used the computer for a couple of weeks to make sure nothing was wrong, then deleted a few more and kept repeating that till I was able to delete all without any problem.

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Just on the subject of Easycleaner, I gave that a try a while back, and it was too scary for me.

 

After running Registry Mechanic, and CCleaner "Issues", Easycleaner would find a host of stuff, and just as scary was Easycleaners "Find Duplicates" (not sure if that's the right name, as I don't have it now).

 

This found literally hundreds of apparent duplicate files to delete. Once again, I'm fairly certain my pc would have been well screwed up if I'd blindly gone ahead. Of course MHO.

 

With Registry Mechanic and CCleaner, I usually have a quick visual check as to what is being deleted, and 99% of the time, the items tie in with something I've recently deleted or uninstalled.

 

With items I didn't recognize, I trusted R.M. over my limited knowledge of the registry, (of course using the backup feature), and so far my trust in it has been well placed.

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I would be a little bit more careful than that, it took me many months before I trusted it completely and allowed it to remove everything. I basically deleted the entries I was confident were safe, used the computer for a couple of weeks to make sure nothing was wrong, then deleted a few more and kept repeating that till I was able to delete all without any problem.

Thanks, JDPower, this is good advice. But it does lead to another question. I noticed that after a scan, the checkbox on every entry it found is checked -- ready for action. If I have hundreds of entries and only want to deal with a few of them, do I have to manually uncheck all the rest of them -- one at a time -- or is there a button or command somewhere that will uncheck all of them at once?

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I would be a little bit more careful than that, it took me many months before I trusted it completely and allowed it to remove everything. I basically deleted the entries I was confident were safe, used the computer for a couple of weeks to make sure nothing was wrong, then deleted a few more and kept repeating that till I was able to delete all without any problem.

Thanks, JDPower, this is good advice. But it does lead to another question. I noticed that after a scan, the checkbox on every entry it found is checked -- ready for action. If I have hundreds of entries and only want to deal with a few of them, do I have to manually uncheck all the rest of them -- one at a time -- or is there a button or command somewhere that will uncheck all of them at once?

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Yes Tom,

 

If you right click in the results window, you can select keep all, and then re check the ones you want to get rid of.

 

If I think back, when I first got this app, I bit the bullet and repaired everything. And there was a lot of stuff. Of course I backed up/made restore point first.

 

I'm not suggesting you do that, just giving you my experience.

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Just on the subject of Easycleaner, I gave that a try a while back, and it was too scary for me.

 

After running Registry Mechanic, and CCleaner "Issues", Easycleaner would find a host of stuff, and just as scary was Easycleaners "Find Duplicates" (not sure if that's the right name, as I don't have it now).

 

This found literally hundreds of apparent duplicate files to delete. Once again, I'm fairly certain my pc would have been well screwed up if I'd blindly gone ahead. Of course MHO.

EasyCleaner is just as safe as CCleaner - so long as you never use the Duplicates Finder in EasyCleaner. The Duplicates Finder is the only dangerous part of EasyCleaner.

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If I think back, when I first got this app, I bit the bullet and repaired everything. And there was a lot of stuff. Of course I backed up/made restore point first.

 

I'm not suggesting you do that, just giving you my experience.

Out of all the stuff it's found on my system I only have 36 items that are in it's Ignore List, which says a good deal about how "safe it is." But since each system is different everyone should find out on an individual basis if what is listed to be removed should actually be removed or ignored.

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EasyCleaner is just as safe as CCleaner - so long as you never use the Duplicates Finder in EasyCleaner. The Duplicates Finder is the only dangerous part of EasyCleaner.

That's actually quite reassuring to know, and I'll look at it again as it's a nice program to use.

 

As you say, everyone's pc is different, which makes this question probably impossible to answer, but, what basically do you look for to keep?

 

I've never kept anything, and had no problems, but, I might have lost stuff that I had to redo, or re-enter, without realising that I'd lost it in the first place. Am I warm?

 

This is making sense to me, I only hope it's making sense to you. :D

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As you say, everyone's pc is different, which makes this question probably impossible to answer, but, what basically do you look for to keep?

 

I've never kept anything, and had no problems

It's registry cleaner can find some stuff in the registry. This is my actual skip list I use for it's registry cleaner, of course depending upon what you have installed you may need to add more:

asfsipc.dll, audacity, awsoftware, backup.bkf, CCleaner,
ct4mgm.sf2, Desktop, enable.dvd, gabest, GroupPolicy,
help, Hewlett-Packard, hpqPSXP, ImgBurn, layout.ini,
ntevt.log, plugin.ocx, PrintHood, Recent, "Shell Folders",
servicepackcache, servicepackfiles, stashimapi.bin,
system.mdw, system32\blank.htm, ssupdate.exe,
twainds.tif, wbemsnmp.log, wmdm.log

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If I can pick your brains a little more, what would be the result if you didn't have that skip list, with the things you have listed?

 

Is it just config type stuff that you would lose, or would it be more serious, like things not working anymore.

 

Cheers.

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If I can pick your brains a little more, what would be the result if you didn't have that skip list, with the things you have listed?

 

Is it just config type stuff that you would lose, or would it be more serious, like things not working anymore.

 

Cheers.

Well I know it will delete CCleaner settings from the registry under Advanced -> Custom Files and Folders, not sure about the newest CCleaner 2 Beta 2 though. With everything else it pretty much protects some default Windows stuff that EasyCleaner may or may not detect on your system, and some MRU's for instance Audacity's MRU list.

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While talking about MRU's, this is great program to clean all kind of MRU entries from the registry: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/mrublaster.html

 

I have set it to run silently at Windows start-up.

The same here! I've been using it since whenever I first started using SpywareBlaster and checked out their other freeware, I just wish it was able to clean out the Customize Notifications icons in WinXP SP2 like it did on SP1.

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The same here! I've been using it since whenever I first started using SpywareBlaster and checked out their other freeware, I just wish it was able to clean out the Customize Notifications icons in WinXP SP2 like it did on SP1.

Do MRUs serve any real purpose, or is it safe to delete all of them that MRU Blaster finds?

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