Are computer registry cleaners safe?
I just downloaded a computer registry cleaner off of download.com. It found over 400 problems. I want to click the "fix it" button to clean it all up, but I’m afraid it will erase important things off of my computer. What do you think?
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Filed under: Registry Cleaners
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Regardless of how you go about cleaning your registry you should always back it up, first.
Regarding tools – as a programmer of 25 years plus experience, I could not recommend any ‘automatic’ tool that purports to be effective. The primary reason for this is the rapid pace of evolution that is the current nature of the computing world. In other words – how could any program truly be aware of all the items within your registry that may or may not be beneficial? How could it possibly know all of the requirements of your particular software installations? It can’t.
With qualified knowledge though, there are a number of things you can use to help find items that might be ill-advised within your registry as well as plain old branch by branch inspection.
If you do not FULLY understand the consequences of any action you may take – do not take it.
If you think you are going to greatly enhance the performance of your system by tweaking the registry – you likely are not going to without an extensive background regarding the specific area you are hoping to improve.
Using quality spyware removers and anti-virus products AND researching your start up list will yield the most significant improvements. Searching Yahoo for ‘start-up list, windows’ may yield some very informative articles.
Back-up your registry FIRST!!!!! if it screws things up you will have to install the O/S over…I always clean my registry myself!!
They can cause some minor problems in my experience. If you use them, I found it better to read and select the entries you want removed or "fixed". If in doubt, leave it there. If you PC is running well, don’t fix it! There is a lot of junk software on the market that
promise to make your PC run faster, boot quicker, etc. Sometimes the minor increase in performance is not worth risk of ruining a well running machine.
First off, it depends on which cleaner you are using. It should be OK as Cnet generally screens the programs they list on that site….but many freebie download versions aren’t all that comprehensive and may miss important problems. On the screen where it says it found 400 problems, look for a link to a list of the supposed problems it found. Look through the list to see if they are all registry related. If you decide to go ahead and use this one, it’s a good idea to back up your registry before doing so. Otherwise I’d invest a few bucks in a good all purpose program like Norton System Works. I have it on 2 computers and it is easy to use. It even has a one button checkup that does everything from optimizing your registry to dumping your cache to checking program and shortcut integrity. System Works also has a complete version of their anti virus software plus a program called Go Back where you can do a system restore in the event of a major crash. Just a thought. Good Luck.
I had a nasty virus a couple of months ago, a friend of mine works on computers , after he cleaned it out he loaded 3 programs for me to run to keep it running good, AD-WARE,SPY BOT, and SYSTEM MECHANIC along with MacAfee virus scan , once a week
they are usually spyware
you have to pay for them too , they are not free