registry programs

[dabombk1]

i have been using registry healer and jv16 to clean my registry. suddenly today when running either program my laptop,running xp home, will shut down. the laptop is performing normal in all other aspects. does anyone have any troubleshoots. thank you in advance

[quint]

i have been using registry healer and jv16 to clean my registry.  suddenly today when running either program my laptop,running xp home, will shut down.  the laptop is performing normal in all other aspects.  does anyone have any troubleshoots. thank you in advance

Others here are more knowledgable than I, but it has been my experience, that any "Registry cleaning" program WILL eventually clean it too good; unneeded registry entries take up very little space, and mostly do no harm. Anything stronger than MS's RegClean (which is very docile), I for one won't use; I have had many problems in the past, when using these programs religiously, few problems when I stopped. Suggestion: use System Restore to try to repair your current problem.I anxiously await other replies and explanations, because my problems could have been through my own ignorance, and I know the people here will help us both. ;)BTW welcome.

[scott88008]

Every time I've messed with the registry (using System Mechanic, etc.) I've regretted it. I'll leave it to the professionals from now on (or until the day I fully understand all the ramifications).

[greengeek]

This should be read by anyone who would like to mess around with their registry: http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2251-10117118.htmlIf you download and then delete a lot of programs then some sort of clean up is necessary otherwise Windows will stumble over his own feet trying to find the right stuff that he needs. If you run a reasonably clean system then registry cleanup programs are not necessary.Joy

[brucekrymow]

Hi, Green ~'If you run a reasonably clean system then registry cleanup programs are not necessary.'I must respectfully disagree and disabuse you of this notion. Over time, the windows registry can hold a lot of data that is no longer valid. Such information links points to a location where there was a file, but the file is no longer there. Often such invalid links occur because programs uninstalled do not completely remove their registry entries, programs were not correctly uninstalled, viewing a file attached to email without saving them to disk first and applications that have been moved without uninstalling and reinstalling them. This invalid data eventually begins to clutter your registry, slowing Windows down and causing other possible problems. You also get left with orphaned entries, entries that exist but don't point to any files or folders or point to the wrong files. Registry entries can also point to other registry entries that don't exist any more. The registry quickly accumulates a lot of corrupted, unused and unnecessary register keys as well as boatloads of unneccessary MRU entries. If the registry collectively has too many of these entries, your computer can slow down and in some cases can even crash. These invalid links are very common in the system registry and it is always a good idea to clean them out to reduce bloat regularly thus making it smaller and faster to access. Therefore, it is a good idea to clean the registry every once in a while as regular part of your computer maintenance.

[Bruno]

On every windows computer I get my hands on, I immediately install 3 programs: Easy Cleaner ( Toni Arts ), RegCleaner ( non-MS ) and Regback ( Jerry ? ). The first two to clean out the mess, the last one to make my job, troubleshooting, easy.I do troubleshoot many friends with their windows computers, if they are happy with windows, that's perfectly O.K. , but each and every time I thank heaven on my bare knees that I'm running Linux. Bruno

[Guest ComputerBob]

Many registry cleaners have a feature that allows you to backup any deleted registry entries in a folder. That way, if you have any problems after cleaning the registry, you can restore any/all of those deleted entries and get your system back the way it was before you ran the registry cleaner. If you don't have any problems for several days, then you can delete that backup folder.

[quint]

When it comes to the Windows registry, hard to beat this guy:http://www.woram.com/

[Guest LilBambi]

quint --You are right about that ---I do agree with Bruce, but many of the registry cleaning tools can be way too agressive at times and do not always get it right.Plus many new users have been known to indescriminately just delete anything that shows up in these cleaners without even knowing what these entries belong to. There have been times when I have seen folks really mess up their registry using them. I have even had to do a soft reinstall of the OS to fix the problems they created for themselves. So tread lightly!Always best to use a balanced and knowledge-based approach to registry editing no matter what you use to do it.

[quint]

quint --You are right about that  ---I do agree with Bruce, but many of the registry cleaning tools can be way too agressive at times and do not always get it right.Plus many new users have been known to indescriminately just delete anything that shows up in these cleaners without even knowing what these entries belong to.  There have been times when I have seen folks really mess up their registry using them. I have even had to do a soft reinstall of the OS to fix the problems they created for themselves.  So tread lightly!Always best to use a balanced and knowledge-based approach to registry editing no matter what you use to do it.

Fran, so eloquently put.

[Guest LilBambi]

quint --Why thank you kind sir