05-20-2011, 08:19 AM
Quote:No no, do some research, the registry is used for pretty much everything on your computer. It's not just a "settings" location for all of your programs.
I always do research before I post, and none of them are my personal opinion, unless of course stated otherwise. I am not removing the fact of how important the Registry is -- part of my training taught me a great deal of how it works and why is it very crucial in a system. I can also say I am quite familiar with it, however that is not the point.
I do not know where you got the "settings" implication.Quote:And if there is clutter in there, it would be the same thing as searching through your registry manually or when the computer itself needs to look for something to find out how to execute something. The more clutter you have the longer it will take to do that, and it will slow down computer performance.
Now, that, is where the debate should be...
Professionals I have encountered claim that that is not the case. "Speeding up" would and can only refer to the searching time you do via the Registry Editor. About the computer executing something, it does not affect the performance simply because the Registry is made in a way that your system will only look at a specific "path". You are aware of the five specific components, yes? Also, no one exactly knows what "clutter" can mean for a system. A definition could be invalid or null entries, but knowing the fact that these do not even have values, gives the question: Does it even bother the system at all?
The only program I would trust is ERUNT. I understand this is quite late in terms of the date, however the points are still valid for obvious reasons.
Quote:Don't use the word guarantee next time. There's proof in the fact that even average computer users will notice a computer slow down after time because they have a cluttered registry
That could mean different things. Where is the proof? Even statistics would help. I would like to know if the people using these products actually do know what is being removed from their system. As far as I am concerned, the Registry practically has control of everything. I can name a lot of unneeded services, that when disabled will speed up a system. I can say it counts as "Registry clutters" to an extent. I would like to see proof of how "void" entries in the Registry, when removed, sped up a system.
Quote:If you wanted to do an experiment, keep your hard drive in top shape by doing defrag every once in a while, clear all of your temp files, do disk cleanups... All on a new computer from the start, and after a while you'll still notice a slowdown. The fact being that the culprit here is a cluttered registry. I studied this stuff in school a while back taking courses in computer engineering.
A user already did that here. I suggest you read it. The people who did the researches aren't amateurs either. They are credited Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs), and some of them are the creators of today's known analysis tools. Personally, I will not take their words as untruthful and baseless, they being recognized by Microsoft itself.
On a personal note, I never did a defragmentation (both file and Registry) and only temporary files cleaning. The system I have is over six years old, and I have not experienced slowdowns. I would like to do a test wherein I'll use a Registry cleaner and see if it does do wonders.
Quote:Using a registry cleaner will also provide a backup option for you.
Registry cleaners are not the only things that can backup the Registry. ERUNT is one. The Registry Editor can also do that.
Quote:The registry cleaner basically just removes any unused registry files and keys and cleans the registry of errors. The way it does that is it looks for a location for some of the files, and if it's non existent, then it will remove the registry value.
That is the most controversial point. How exactly do these programs know, 100% of the time, what should be removed or not? Also, missing values and unused keys won't typically give you any errors. The most likely scenario I can think of (when it does give you an error), is a Registry key associated with an active program. No doubt it will complain if some file went missing. But for an uninstalled program? I have yet to see such a case. An example is a file at startup... Set a file to run at startup (via adding a key) and delete it. That then, leaves the key empty and unused, correct? When it boots up and finds that the file is missing, it will not give you an error.
Quote: If your worried about a screw up then use the restore feature to create a restore point in addition to a backup. Save your backups in the C:\ drive though for easy access to merging it into your computer if it does mess up and you can't get into your computer because of a change the program made. You should be able to do this with the system recovery option of cmd.
I do not have anything to argue with this point.
