05-20-2011, 03:06 PM
Quote: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. Tongue I do not know where you got the "settings" implication.
You didn't know that the registry could be used to disable the task manager? Thats what I mean by settings, 1 and 0 for values.
Quote: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?
Most computer performance tests are actually started by the developers of registry-cleaning tools. A registry has thousands of entries, all of which even though the files are small still have to take up space somewhere, being on your hard drive. When a program gets uninstalled it's not completely uninstalled, and that location is still left behind pointing to a location that doesn't exist, or to a program that got moved. Newer registry files are created all the time, and as it fills up it will decrease computer performance, and even boot time, since memory tests and registry files are searched for before the computer even gets to log in. The problem here is that Windows itself almost never removes registry entries, so over time that will accumulate.
The performance increase doesn't happen with every registry cleanup you do because sometimes it doesn't need to clean up the areas of the registry that would affect performance on your computer. For example, drivers on your computer, have registry files that act as a configuration for how they are defined. If you uninstall a driver, previous settings can still be left behind within a registry key or subkey. If you go to install that driver again on your system or another driver, those values can be confused with one another, and your registry will act like a brain that tries to figure out which value is used for what. And that "problem solving" it does, takes time. The registry doesn't always look for a "path" on the system simply because other registry keys and values can be added on to determine how other things work within the system. It will look through a key to determine what "settings" are supposed to be loaded. And some keys can have over a hundred different values that it will have to look through. If there's anything left behind from previous versions of a file/program/whatever it will have to solve conflicts, and not use a value everytime it's called for, or the value has data or information that isn't supported for what it's supposed to do because the file/program that it's executing wasn't the original that the registry file was created for.
I'm not saying that registry file cleaners aren't flawless, because the registry is a fairly complex thing. Mistakes can be made, but you'd have a better chance of messing up the registry by manually removing different keys and values. Windows isn't going to clean it's "clutter" up for you like I mentioned before, and that's how it would affect performance. It's also the reason why people don't notice a "speedup" whether it's minor or significant, every time they try or use a registry cleaner. However it can save you from times of freezing up or becoming unresponsive for those reasons as well mentioned above.
There's always flaws in a system, so the registry isn't perfect. One of the main reasons why I consider a registry cleaner. You need a reputable program to do it though.
Quote: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.
There's registry programs that tell you what is being removed in a list view for you to confirm. If you are a good computer user you'd likely take a look through the list given. The debate here is disregarding any facts that most people won't do that because that's irrelevant to a registry cleaners job. The computer user himself/herself also has a job to make sure that the computer is being maintained.
The registry does have control of everything, but it isn't perfect. Windows doesn't remove hardly any values for you. It's like a kid that goes to make a peanut butter sandwich in the kitchen and forgets to do the dishes after. The registry cleaner could be related to the dishwasher. Sometimes the food on some plates, doesn't come off and most of the time it does.
Quote: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.
You have to take into account that that piece of information was defined in 2008, and people were still developing programs to work more efficiently with the registry. Since then they have become more reliable and do a lot more than they used to with windows versions dating back to Windows 98 to around Windows 2k. At the time this was mentioned, Windows Vista has just came out.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libra...51049.aspx
Quote:Registry cleaners are not the only things that can backup the Registry. ERUNT is one. The Registry Editor can also do that
But we're not comparing programs in this debate lol. A Registry cleaner will make a backup before it modifies/removes any information from it. I could make backups of my registry all day using the registry editor itself, but the registry is modified all the time, so it would be very unorthodox to do so.
Quote:That is the most controversial point. How exactly do these programs know, 100% of the time, what should be removed or not?
I won't claim that a registry editor is flawless. But even the Windows system itself is not flawless, and since values don't get deleted much by windows itself, errors that get created will stay as errors, and if not fixed, can potentially cause problems on your system. This isn't the case 100% of the time though, but even without modifying the registry Windows itself can screw it up for you.
Quote:Also, missing values and unused keys won't typically give you any errors
Missing values will give you errors more often than unused values. But if you try to reinstall a program/file that used to use that value, the value sometimes doesn't get replaced, and will become a conflict with newer values beside it, which is where the problem in that would start.
Quote: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.
An active program yes, but it will still take up a small amount of space in the registry. Even though hardly significant at all, if you keep your computer for a long time, if you want to free up a small bit of space then it's possible, even though I won't make this small statement a big part of my side of the debate. Keeping in mind that registry files aren't all used for programs, unused registry values for other things can lead to problems later on.
For that last part, it won't give you an error, but if you've set a whole bunch of startup programs, and then removed them, would it not have to search to see if those programs are set to startup when windows starts? Still takes a bit of time to look through that checklist, even though it won't give you an error because it's inactive.
To be completely honest, I usually go by reliable sources, but I do understand that the registry is a big debate, It just makes more sense to me to believe that the information in the database of the registry, if more organized, would cause less problems because of a result of a cleanup because it's still data left behind as a blueprint for your computer. There's even debates like this between reputable Microsoft developers, and newer developments of programs that are registry utilities change the sides of the debate constantly, and even in between operating systems for how the registry is used.