# Solved: How Do I Find a Reliable (& Safe) Registry Cleaner?



## z1unicorn (Aug 13, 2007)

Candidates: Max Registry Cleaner, Registry Fixer, Registry Fix. Are these currently the best ones available? From among these three, which is the best choice?


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## WhitPhil (Oct 4, 2000)

Best Choice?

None!

Contrary to the hype on each of their websites, these programs do nothing for performance or stability, can can leave you in a "can't boot" situation.


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## raybro (Apr 27, 2003)

The terms 'Reliable" and 'Safe' are not applicable to Registry Cleaners of any brand. You may use it once or twice with no discernable adverse effects, but it will bite you sooner or later. The best you can hope for is one that will allow you to restore the Registry to it's former configuration after it screws it up.

Additionally, The value of cleaning unnecessary entries from the registry is greatly over rated. You can gain much more from simply doing routine maintenace such as cleaning Temporary Internet files, History files and defragmenting the HDD on a regular basis. All these functions can be accomplished using the tools available with the OS.

Raybro


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## MFDnNC (Sep 7, 2004)

Opinion 3 - don't waste your time with any of them!


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## HalTrout (Mar 22, 2007)

Agreed! - Look at all the posts on this forum where peeps systems were corrupted by registry cleaners. They make many $ off those programs, and should have to pay for damages.

Best thing is to take checkpoints periodically, backup files and always backup registry before making any manual changes.


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## z1unicorn (Aug 13, 2007)

Thanks. I appreciate the feedback though, I must say, I'm surprised at the uniformly negative view of registry cleaners!


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## 1101doc (Dec 9, 2006)

By definitition, a Registry "Cleaner" must carry "rules" by which it decides which entries are no longer valid. At this point one is expecting software to make an informed decision. If you think about how well spam filters work for e-mails, you begin to get the idea. Tell me you _never_ get spam in your inbox, and _never_ get real e-mails sent to the spam folder. Registry cleaners check through the Registry and make similar decisions.

It's one thing to have mistakes made with sorting my e-mail, but quite another when the mistakes are made in my Registry. If my Registry becomes messed up, my system becomes messed up, often to the point of complete failure.

Rather than worrying about "cleaning" the Registy, I am much more concerned about having solid back-ups for the Registy. 
For this I have found nothing better than free ERUNT.

Emergency Restore Utility for NT makes a complete back-up of my Registry at first boot each day, and saves the most recent 30. Each back-up contains its own .exe which, when run, will restore the entire Registry to the state in which it was at the time the back-up was made, without running the parent program. If I can access my Windows folder, I can "go back" to any morning during the last month!

Get ERUNT: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
Read simple tutorial: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt

Put ERUNT to work for you before making _any_ changes to your Registry!
Please.


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## BobJam (Jan 10, 2005)

On the topic of Registry Cleaners, I would "side" with all the others that have posted that they are no good . . . *DON'T USE THEM*.

But for novices, and even "intermediate" users, like myself, I would definitely advise against using them.

Here are two links to articles on Registry Cleaners that I'd highly recommend be read by anyone thinking about using one (which was your original post anyway):

*http://asknerd.net/bestregistrycleaner.html​*An excerpt from that article:​
_" . . . The problem with most registry repair titles is that they are based on the same open source software script . . . they are being sold by companies that didn't develop them - and therefore have no real understanding of their function or even how they work. The result is that you risk installing an inferior piece of software that can permanently damage your computer"_​
Another excerpt:​
_"The issue lies in the explosion of spam-review sites which are nothing more then websites promoting affiliate links under the guise of an official " review " site. There main goal is to accomplish one thing - to send you to the site they are promoting and hoping you buy the product they are selling - if you do, they get up to a 75% cut of the sale. In other words, their reviews are up for sale - and are not anything but thinly veiled sales pitches. For example, if you do a search for the term " Paid Survey " or " Registry Repair " you'll notice that the paid listings all include sites that say " read our review " or " warning, don't download anything until you read this..."_​
*http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000643.html​*
The article on this site is titled *"Why I dont use registry cleaners"*​An excerpt:​
_" . . . what possible performance benefits can you get from cleaning up unneeded registry entries and eliminating a few stray DLL files? Even in the best-case scenario the impact should be trivial at best. Maybe a second or two here and there, maybe a few kilobytes of freed-up RAM, and Im being generous. How can you balance those against the risk that the utility will clean (in other words, delete) something you really need, causing a program or feature to fail?"_​
Another excerpt from the same article:​
_"The Registry is an enormous database and all this Cleaning really doesnt amount to muchIve said this before, but I liken it to sweeping out one parking space in a parking lot the size of Montana  a registry tweak here and there is desirable or even necessary sometimes, but random cleaning, especially for the novice, is inviting disaster."_​
Just my two cents . . .


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

My advice is even more simple. 

Don't fix stuff that ain't broke!


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## z1unicorn (Aug 13, 2007)

Thanks to all of you for your responses/advice. You've effectively touted me off so-called registry "cleaners!"


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Glad we could help. 

*You can mark your own threads solved using the thread tools at the top of the page in the upper right corner.©*


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## Wiskerluv (Oct 31, 2006)

Boy you aren't kidding about Registry cleaners...I just learned my lesson by using Registry Vac and I had to reformat windows. Ijust formatted 2 weeks ago and reinstalled all my programs when this happened. It sure did a great job of vaccuming...lol. I lost everything.
I will NEVER, NEVER use one of those programs again!!


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## richurban (Aug 11, 2007)

z1unicorn, I have had good experiences with System Mechanic 6 and 7 with my own and with a few client computers. I indicate a few because only a few have it installed. The others, along with the SM users actually, pay for me to fix their pc issues. SM resolves the occasional random error on shutdowns, along with overall system maintenance. SM recently resolved a tough "dwwin.exe DLL file not found error" that plenty of tech forums and even steps recommended in Microsoft's related article could not resolve!

PC Tools makes Registry Mechanic and the reviews are mixed. I have not used it though, so can not recommend aside from this mention. It keeps cleanups to a minimum, detects and can remove bad DLLs and results in far less carnage than the likes of Norton and the majority of "cleaners" out there. You can tweak the settings, which helps.

SpyBot SD 1.4 will backup the registry, as will System Mechanic and probably Registry Mechanic. ERUNT is the best by far for backup AND restore when needed! Good luck and I tend to agree... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."


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## BobJam (Jan 10, 2005)

One more brief comment, brought to mind by richurban's post.

richurban is an "advanced" user, and registry cleaners used by those people may be appropriate.

Nevertheless, in the hands of novices, and even intermediate users, and sometimes advanced users, they are dangerous at best.

And I noticed that richurban even put a qualifying statement at the end of that post:

*I tend to agree... "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."​*


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I have been known to use CCleaner to do registry cleanup. However, I look at each entry and decide if I want it to "clean" it. A novice user doesn't enjoy the luxury of knowing which entries are safe to remove and which are not.

Registry cleaners are like explosives, best left to the experts.


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