[clueless2geek]

I have a lot of missing shared DLL, unused file extensions, ActiveX/COM issues (do I need DirectAnimation?), and uninstaller Reference issues, among them. Some are obviously in need of fixing/getting rid of, but the rest? Do I just trust CCleaner's results and fix all? Would appreciate help.

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Hello and welcome to Geeks to Go,

The registry is a dangerous place to be playing around, if you don’t know what CCleaner is fixing I would recommend you don’t do it. As good of a tool that CCleaner is we have kind of gotten away from recommending the use of CCleaner because there are a few functions (registry cleaning being one of them) on there that can mess up your system pretty bad if you don’t know what your doing. In most cases CCleaner will work fine, but any time you go messing around with the registry, you run the risk of turning your system into a expensive paper weight.

[BHowett]

Hello and welcome to Geeks to Go,

The registry is a dangerous place to be playing around, if you don’t know what CCleaner is fixing I would recommend you don’t do it. As good of a tool that CCleaner is we have kind of gotten away from recommending the use of CCleaner because there are a few functions (registry cleaning being one of them) on there that can mess up your system pretty bad if you don’t know what your doing. In most cases CCleaner will work fine, but any time you go messing around with the registry, you run the risk of turning your system into a expensive paper weight.

[The Skeptic]

CCleaner never failed me and I use it extensively, on a daily basis. To be on the safe side, backup your registry when given the option to do so. After the backup clean everything. Repeat the processes (cleaner and registry) a number of times until nothing is left to be cleaned.

[Makaveli213]

Hello,

I have used CCleaner and made a backup just in case. I have also used Eusing Registry Repair without fail for several months now. Might also be a alternative.

Link removed

Cheers,
Mak

[Mike]

Hi there,

I use CCleaner as well but tend to avoid the Registry Cleaner, simply because it hasn't ever done anything to boost my computers performance, and risking a corrupt registy for nothing isn't really worth it.

Here is some reading material that was provided in a discussion by Sari.

Miekiemoes, who is an expert here and many other places, has an excellent blog here.

This is an excellent summary at WTT. The entire thread is worth reading (it was started in 2005, but is still relevant), but that post is especially worthwhile.

Cheers,

Mike

EDIT- and if you want to back up your registry use ERUNT.

Edited by Mike, 28 June 2008 - 01:05 PM.

[The Skeptic]

I am familiar with the discussion and with the subject in general. I disagree about the generalization. You have to choose reliable tools and CCleaner is certainly one of them. Another tool that I use quite often is PageDefrag by Sysinternals. It's a defragmantation tool for page and registry files which are not defragged by "normal" defraggers. Both these tools are excellent and a combination of the two, one for cleaning, one for defragging, are used by me as standard procedures for speeding up computers. Never failed me.

Having said that, I certainly agree that a backup of the registry is an important and valuable precaution.

[Kat]

Actually, the policy here at GeeksToGo is that we do not recommend the use of any Registry Cleaners. There is too much room for error on the part of our users. Helping our members have the best possible computer performance is what we do. We don't want the chance of someone completely hosing their machine after using one of these tools.

They can be extremely dangerous, especially in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Deleting the wrong entries can render a PC unusable, and none of us want to be in the position of helping a user recover from that. There is also no evidence that cleaning out the registry has any effect on the overall speed of a PC. It will speed up searches within the registry, but that has no effect on performance.

There are a few misunderstandings about the Registry. People seem to think that cleaning the Registry will make the Registry smaller and easier managable. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. What you are doing is create miniature gaps in the Registry's on-disc file. These gaps will be reused by new data to be inserted in the Registry. End result of this action is that the Registry becomes fragmented. Searching data in a fragmented file (be it a database on a network server or a user's Registry) is way slower than an optimized file. In short the only way to speed up handling of the Registry (and even that is marginal) is by completely rewriting the file(s).

In short, we recommend that you stay away from these programs.