Re: registry cleaners
> Sammy Castagna wrote:
>> Are registry cleaners a good idea or bad? I have done some reading
>> and some say they are bad and some say they are bad.
>
>
> A registry cleaner - even a safe one, should such ever be
> developed - is an exercise in, at best, futility.
Several exist now.
There is no real
> need for registry cleaners, other than to provide a profit to their
> manufacturers. On rare occasions, registry cleaners can be, in the
> hands of a skilled technician, useful, time-saving diagnostic tools.
> Otherwise, they're nothing but snake oil.
Untrue. What are your reasons for saying that, and citeable evidence
that it's true?
>
> Remember, the registry is an *indexed* database. The OS doesn't have
> scan through each and every registry entry to find the one that it's
> looking for. To use an imperfect analogy, try thinking of the
> registry as a book with a very detailed table of contents. Once the
> OS knows to which "page" it must turn to find the information needed,
> the OS goes *directly* (much more so than you or I could do with a
> physical book) to the pertinent data. The number of intervening
> "pages, paragraphs, and words" is utterly irrelevant.
Well, I think that's called an Index in most books, not a TOC, and it's
only partially true. You don't just look at an index and know
immeidately where to go.
The "registry" is not just one "thing" in the computer. It's
comprised of many, many files spread out in mostly one folder, but not
completely.
You have to GET the index name/location, then go through the index to
LOCATE it so you'll know its memory location, assuming it is in memory
at that time and doesn't need to be paged in, then you have to go TO
that location, read it, and from there execute possibly another five or
six hundred more accesses to get the information that goes WITH that
first index, so the OS knows whether you have permission to access it,
what format it's in, how to present it to you, put together what needs
to be drawn on the screen from another several hundred points within the
registry, and finally display it and see what you want to do next with
it. Now, some forms of errors in the reigstry are going to take twenty
seconds to time out, so for every one of those you come acruss, usually
during boot, add twenty seconds for each one.
And all that's happened so far, under the right circumstances, is
displayed something on the screen or picked up some further instructions
that need to be processed all over again in much the same way.
registries are multi-megabit collections of data spread out amongst
several files, all extensionless files with the exception of ntuser.dat,
and the amount of data and manipulation is happening constantly in the
background.
If you'd like a quick look at what goes on inside your "registry", there
is a free file called Regmon you can download from:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896652.aspx
that will show you most of what's happening.
Caveat: Don't let it run too long. It will create a hormongously large
file unless you turn on some filters or limit it.
<quote>RegMon is a Registry monitoring utility that will show you which
applications are accessing your Registry, which keys they are accessing,
and the Registry data that they are reading and writing - all in
real-time. This advanced utility takes you one step beyond what static
Registry tools can do, to let you see and understand exactly how
programs use the Registry. With static tools you might be able to see
what Registry values and keys changed. With Regmon you'll see how the
values and keys changed..
RegMon works on Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, Windows 95/98/Me and Windows
64-bit for x64.
<end quote>
There are better applications for this purpose, but Regmon makes the
point I want. And keep in mind it's not showing ALL of the registry
activity - only that of your applications, but it's all of their
activity w/r to the registry.
So, the "directly" comment is pretty much a moot point. Directly
several thousands or hundreds of thousands of times is more like it.
>
> The only time the sheer number of registry entries matters, and
> can possibly affect performance, is when one is doing something that
> requires a full entry-by-entry scan of the registry.
....
THAT is a load of BS; you either know that or are a lot more ignorant
than I gave you credit for.
I would not be so adamant with your phony claims if you ever had the
decency to ever provide ANY verifiable or even empirical evidence of
your claims. You asked me for mine and I gave them to you long ago; I
finally came across them the other day in my archives when I was looking
for some thing else. You chose to be a black hole. You remain that
black hole to this day. You are either a huge narcissist with a fragile
ego or intentionally ignorant.
You were scared off by the proposal I made to you to work this out,
along with my promise of having an open mind about your inputs. But you
apparently feared the results and thus black-holed again. That offer no
longer stands - you are a bona-fide bum and that's all there can be to
it.
Twayne
--
Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities -- Voltaire
>
>> Has any one here had any
>> experience with them good or bad. Or are they even necessary looks
>> like Microsoft would build it into the operating system if it were
>> needed. Sammy Castagna
>>
>>
>
>
>
> Why do you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry? What
> specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some program's
> bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can be fixed by
> using a registry cleaner?
>
> If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would
> be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the
> specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. After
> all, why use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally,
> the manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less
> likely to have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product
> to make multiple changes simultaneously. The only thing needed to
> safely clean your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.
>
> The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
> the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of
> the device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in
> the registry can have severe consequences. One should not even
> turning loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is
> fully
> confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result
> of each and every change.
>
> Having repeatedly seen the results of inexperienced people using
> automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
> experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
> Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the
> hands of the inexperienced user. If you lack the knowledge and
> experience to maintain your registry by yourself, then you also lack
> the knowledge and experience to safely configure and use any
> automated registry cleaner, no matter how safe they claim to be.
>
> More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
> automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained,
> inexperienced computer user, does any real good, whatsoever. There's
> certainly been no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the
> use of such
> products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
> or stability. Given the potential for harm, it's just not worth the
> risk.
> Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
> every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
> And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
> good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's
> no real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
> effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
> non-existent benefits.
>
> I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
> of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
> useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to
> make any changes automatically. But I really don't think that there
> are any registry cleaners that are truly safe for the general public
> to use. Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools simply
> are not safe in the hands of the inexperienced user.
>
>
> Why I don't use registry cleaners
> http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=643
>
> AumHa Forums • View topic - AUMHA Discussion: Should I Use a Registry
> Cleaner?
> http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099
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