Registry Cleaners

[speckytecky]

Over the past 4 or so years I have used a number of different Registry Cleaners on XP machines - the latest I tried today was http://www.free-windows-registry-cle...y_cleaner.html
it did an excellent job.

I havent grasped how the various cleaners work but I guess it must be some simple sform of windows scan that is carried out?

This got me to wondering if there is some sort of built in registry cleaner in Windows that can carry this task out without the need for thrid party software.

Also does anyone have experience of using a cleaner on a server or would that particular registry be best left alone?

[User3204]

Just make sure before doing any reg cleaning on any server, that you have a system state backup.



I find the best one is RegSeeker:
http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

But it is only intended for personal use, unless you can arrange a license with them.

The only problem I have had with it is that it removed all the registry settings that MySQL needed, but that was on the old version, to get it back it creates a backup .REG file that you can re-import.

[tom_newton]

A couple of colleagues (not me - why would I clean /etc!!!) have used "Registry Mechanic" one claimed it performed minor miracles, the other claimed it fouled up IE7 beyond redemption. YMMV, but I suggest that unless there's a compelling reason to funk with the registry, leave it the hell alone

[webman]

I dont trust registry cleaners. I don't know that they know what's crap and what's not

[FN-GM]

i know what you mean webman, someone gave me a fully licensed copy of System mechanic 6 i haven’t even opened it.

PS: anyone who wants it can have it

[bishopsgarthstockton]

I stay clear of registry cleaners, I have a ghost image of my machine, with personal data on a seperate drive. If i do install a new bit of software and it has worked fine for a good month then i will make a new ghost image of the system, keeping both the standard image setup and the new ghost image. that way if any thing does fowl up i can just restore it all back again. thare are sites i think that have been mentioned in the past on here that have tutorials on how to do your self. Infact i have a pdf document "cleaning windows registory for dummies" Im gonna have a flick through that some point 'when i have time' as it is always usefull to know

[User3204]

@webman
This is the reason that I like the Reg Seeker over the other ones.

It gives a list of all the stuff it "suspects" of being dodgy, and then gives you a choice of leaving it all, wiping some, or wiping the lot out.



I have installed windows and then run registry cleaners immediately and they've found "suspicious" stuff !

A lot of what they find overlaps with Ad Aware and SpyBot, and I bet you run these things....



I do use Drive Image myself at home, as it cuts out a lot of the stuff.. When I was running Windows 98 I gained speed from recovering the image every 3-4 months... fortunately with XP this has gotten to be a longer time...

[gnarlyc]

We have found that just not allowing users to have local admin rights solves most of these issues. We have 1700+ workstations, and maybe two or three spyware issues per year. (There are a handful of people with local admin rights due to us not having the time to work out issues with some poorly written software.) We never use Adware, Spybot, or registry cleaners. Our systems are much more stable than machines that I used to see before working here. No one even in IT has local admin rights to their PCs with their normal accounts. We all have admin accounts to install stuff, etc. If you are not doing this, I highly recommend that you start!

Alan

[speckytecky]

We have found that just not allowing users to have local admin rights solves most of these issues...

Alan

Changing the topic a bit from the original question on registry cleaners to user rights. Yes I can see the positives of this but we have a number of classrooms where smart boards are linked to notebooks. These are not networked as such and log on with local user accounts. When I set the user accounts to limited access the smart boart software and other software stopped running so I had to revert to allowing those teachers full admin rights.

[webman]

@User3204: Nope - on Windows I don't use Adaware, Spybot, Pest Patrol or anything like that. The only 'protection' software I use is Symantec AV Corporate.