What are registry cleaners and how do they work?

2 thoughts on “What are registry cleaners and how do they work?”

1. Dominic H says:

   March 27, 2011 at 11:32 pm

   Simon, you’re awesome.

2. Simon P says:

   March 27, 2011 at 11:32 pm

   They are like snake oil for computers. Companies realised that when you download their program they can get paid commission for things like norton free trials or the yahoo toolbar to be installed along with it.

   The problem is what program can they make. Somebody had the bright idea of creating the myth that your registry somehow needs cleaning. After all nearly nobody knows what the registry is apart from that its very complicated and part of windows.

   In reality all registry cleaners just look through your registry and see if each entry has files on your hard drive to match it. This doesnt work for three reasons.

   1, Registry entries are never acted upon unless they are part of windows, you click an icon or its in the short list of the programs which start when your computer does. So dead entries will literally do nothing.

   2, Entries are just lines of text so even if you delete millions of them you will only save the equivilent of a photos worth of space on your hard drive.

   3, The programs really are not sophisticated and make mistakes all the time. Just search google for all the people who have run something like ccleaner and cant boot windows anymore.

   So there is 0 chance of your computer being faster after you run them and a fair chance you will be reinstalling windows.

   LOL thanks, although sometimes i think i spend too long having a go at registry cleaners :). It is really odd though how any tech site could clone a couple of pc hard drives then take benchmarks before and after running various registry cleaners and answer the question once and for all. I dont see why nobody has done it.

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