Registry Cleaners?

[Warhammer]

Any good free registry cleaners out there?

[ISiddiqui]

CC Cleaner is good:

CCleaner - Home

Oh, you can more easily DL it from:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

[Mac Howard]

I downloaded a cleaner (I think it was RegCure) some time ago believing it to be a free cleaner. I ran it and it told me I had 2,300 problems (I can't remember the exact number) and fixed three of them. To fix the other 2297 (or whatever) I had to subscribe to their service. No thanks! I don't appreciate that kind of "free" program.

The advice I've since received, however, is that the vast majority of "problems" will merely be garbage accumulation having almost zero affect on the machine and "fixing" these could be far more dangerous than leaving them alone.

[Drake]

This utility came highly recommended at Major Geek:

http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindows...l?Str=download

It's more of a full spectrum keep-your-machine-happy utility, but it's free and it does registry cleanup. I've used it for about six months now and have been pretty happy with the results.

[weegeebored]

Originally Posted by Warhammer

Any good free registry cleaners out there?

You have to be careful with these; if they are too aggressive they could remove a subkey or entry that is needed by a program or...gulp...Windows.

Crap Cleaner is as good as anything else that's free, and it let's you backup the registry so you could roll it back if need be.

If your concern is to completely remove registry entries that were put there when programs were installed, it is unlikely that a reg cleaner is going to be too effective anyway. If this is the case, you might want to look at uninstaller programs. They basically take a snapshot of your file structure and your registry before and after you install a program. It will then do a comparison and create an uninstall log. When you want to uninstall, it looks at the log and removes those entries.

I know that there is a good free uninstaller out there, but I cannot remember what it's called. I have used the original Ashampoo uninstaller which I really liked, but the second version gave me problems severe enough that I had to do a system restore. They are up to version 3 now, and I was tempted to buy it when they sent me an email discounting it to $9.99.

[DanGarion]

They've talked about registry cleaners a number of times in Maximum PC this past year and they feel there is no benefit to them and they tend to cause more problems then they solve (or don't even really solve problems).

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/wat...istry_cleaning
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/wat..._regcure_legit

[Warhammer]

Well, I got everything back to where it was around lunch time today. Then, after comforting the wife, we were both home sick, I walked back to the computer to turn it back on after loading some updates and shutting it down, etc., I somehow discharged some static electricity against the case, it fired up for 5 secs, and then died. Ever since, it will start up for 5 secs, then shut down, won't even get to POST.

[Drake]

I'd like to hear less about registry cleaners and more about "comforting the wife" now, please.

With pics (or video) if possible. Thanks!