I’ve had my laptop, running Windows XP, for about 18
months now and in all that time I haven’t dared to
mess with the Registry because of all the dire
warnings about what might happen if things go wrong.
But recently the machine has been running slower and I
thought I ought to take a look, so I downloaded
RegSupreme today and ran a scan.
Now, it came up with about 500 “invalid items”. Is that
a lot? Do I need to do anything about it? If so,
what do I do next? Do I just go ahead and tell it to
“fix” by which I guess it means delete them all? A
lot of them I can see are to do with software I’ve
deleted. Nearly all of them it says, “this file does
not exist” But there seem to be a lot of “Microsoft
software” files there as well.
I’m minded to delete the lot, after all the program
creates a backup. But what happens if I delete
something vital and my computer won’t start up again?
I just downloaded RegSupreme and ran it; it found 301 removable entries. I selected all, deleted them and rebooted, and here I am.
That being said, all registry cleaners are capable of doing severe damage to your registry, so you should be certain that you know how to restore your registry, even if Windows will not start (restore from the Recovery Console). If that seems too intimidating, you would be best off not to rush in where angels fear to tread.
Yes, that’s the problem. I’ve never had any problems with my computer starting up before, so I’d have no idea what to do to get it to boot up.
Do you think that 500 or so invalid entries in the Registry are going to make that much difference to the speed? Did you notice any difference after you deleted yours?
I downloaded a program called Ace Utilities that has a reg cleaner on it. I’ve used it for months now and never had a problem. Its shareware, but it has a free trial period, so you can clean your registry and never pay a dime.
“Registry cleaning” is bunk. A missing entry can bring the system down, as can an an important entry that’s deformed.
But extra stuff in there left over from uninstalled programs is NOT a problem. About the worst that’ll happen is you can double-click on some icon and Windows will pop up an error box saying it can’t find progran XYZ.EXE or one of its components. Big deal.
The idea that registry size has an influence on ccomputer speed and that “cleaning it out” will speed things up had some small truth back in the Windows 3.0/3.1 days. On a modern PC with Win98 or later it doesn’t matter spit.
Botom line: Running any registry cleaner is completely unneccesary and has some risk of rendering Windows inoperable. The risk/reward ratio doesn’t make sense at all since the reward side of the fraction is essentially zero.
Now if you’re having startup problems and/or Windows is crashing with registry-related error messages, then there are some automated registry repair tools out there which can perhaps help by replacing defective entries with the installation standard ones. Windows’ recovery console includes a rudimentary form of this too.
But electing to use one of those tools generally leaves you witha crippled installation. Afterwards, Windows runs well enough to let you back up all your files to CD or whatever, followed by needing to do a complete format-&-reinstall to have a stable system.
One man’s advice: stay away from registry cleaners. 99.9% of the time you’ll have no ill effects from one, but why play with fire?
If your computer isn’t running as fast as you think it should, the first thing I’d do is run a virus check, then Ad-Aware and Spybot. LSL Guy is right, the registry isn’t the problem - at best, “cleaning” it will do nothing. At worst, it will cause some of your application to malfunction. Viruses and Spyware are much more likely to be causing slowdowns.