[Randall26]

Sorry, i forgot to ask, does anyone know of a good freeware registry cleaner?

Much obliged

[Noyb]

The general opinion of the experts here at TSG ... Do NOT clean your registry.
It can do more harm than good.

[blues_harp28]

Also check.
Why not to use a reg cleaner..
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643

http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...d-my-last.html

[redoak]

More on why NOT to use a Registry "cleaner":
{redoak}

Advice and Info re Registry 'cleaners'- excerpts from TSG, 10-07

The main reason they (are apt to cause problems) is because the cleaners do NOT just clean up stuff left over from uninstalls. They also "guess" that other items need to be deleted, many times incorrectly. They also attempt to "fix" references to files that no longer exist.

As a result, you can end up with programs that no longer work, functions that no longer work and in some cases a PC that will no longer boot.

There is no performance gains to be had by running these things. Windows does not read the entire registry when it is looking for something. It uses the keys which allow them to go straight to the item that they are looking for.

References:
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643
http://www.computerhope.com/registry.htm


If you really want to see how active the registry is in your normal running environment, download and run Regmon.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...on/Regmon.mspx

As you will see, the registry is constantly being accessed. If, for each of these, the entire file was being searched, your PC would be amazingly slow and not responsive.

[Elvandil]

http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...-computer.html
http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...gcure-any.html
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...y-cleaner.html
http://forums.techguy.org/all-other-...g-cleaner.html
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vi...file-lost.html

Even if registry cleaners actually worked and did what they are supposed to safely, what would be the net gain?

I have over 800,000 entries in my registry. So let's say 1 million as a good approximation. So if we also assume that the "speed" of the registry is an inverse relationship, in other words, if it were half as large, it would be twice as fast, how much would this cleaner actually speed things up?

If it found 5,000 "errors" (they aren't really errors, but let's assume they are since the cleaners do), then the increase in the speed of the registry would be 5000/1000000, or 0.005, or 1/2%. So in other words, by running a registry cleaner and remocving 5000 entries (which is more than most find) and risking serious damage to your installation and programs, you have succeeded in increasing the speed by 1/2 of 1% (if it were even true in the first place that registry access speed is dependent on size in this way, which it isn't).

Does that seem worth it to you?

[Noyb]

does anyone know of a good freeware registry cleaner?

YES .. It's a fresh install of Windows .. Fixes a bunch of other problems also.