What is Registry cleaner ?

[labman]

Do registry cleaner perform a real service or it is just a waste of time and money and add more clutter to your machine? Do any body help me out ?

[Shikhar]

This registry acts as a database for storing important information about your PC.They work magic I think, If you are running a Windows PC, then you will have a Windows Registry. The windows registry can become corrupted over time (just through regular use). Signs of corruption include the dreaded blue screen, computer errors, computer freezing, and even system crashes. Therefore, you must scan your PC for registry errors and repair them. This is the best way to get fast performance from your computer for years to come!

You can find softwares for cleaning your registry at
http://downloads.zdnet.com/search.as...gistry+cleaner..

Just try it.

[Dr. V]

It is not a waste of time or else. Registry Cleaners are software utilities that attempt to remove configuration data from the Windows Registry that is no longer in use or that is unwanted on the system. Such data may include information left by software that has not been uninstalled completely from the computer, information that is no longer of use, or settings required for the operation of malware. A registry cleaner scans the registry, and attempts to pick out the unnecessary values in order to delete or repair them.

Fact that they have some advantages and disadvantages as well, but this is to be used.i'll let you know its advantages and disadvantages.

1. First see their advantages:
Registry cleaners may improve the performance of computers by ridding the registry of redundant information.Due to the sheer size and complexity of the registry database, manually cleaning up debris and invalid entries would be impractical, so registry cleaners are essentially tools that automate the process of looking for invalid entries, missing file references or broken links within the registry and resolving them.

Like take an example, on older versions of Windows, a registry entry indicating a program should be run at startup from a network path that no longer exists can delay startup by as long as the network protocol takes to timeout.

A registry cleaner may be useful for someone that adds or removes programs from their computer very often, however a virtual machine is a faster and more reliable means of reverting an operating system to a previous good known state in a testing scenario.

2. Disadvantages:-
Some registry cleaners make no distinction as to the severity of the errors, and many that do may erroneously categorize errors as "critical" with little basis to support it.

Most of the time critics say there is no reliable way for a third party program to know whether any particular key is invalid, redundant or neither. Poorly designed registry cleaners may not know for sure whether a key is still being used by Windows or what detrimental effects removing it may have. This has led to examples of registry cleaners causing loss of functionality and/or system instability.

Registry cleaners cannot repair scenarios such as undeletable Registry keys caused by embedded null characters in their names; only the RegDelNull utility from Sysinternals (now Microsoft) is able to do this.

Its Marginal performance benefit
On Windows 9x computers, it is possible that a very large registry could slow down the computer's startup time. However this is far less of an issue with NT-based Operating Systems (including Windows XP and Vista) due to a different on-disk structure of the registry, improved memory management and indexing.Slowdown due to registry bloat is thus far less of an issue in modern versions of Windows.
More importantly, however, the difference in speed due to the use of a registry cleaner is negligible: rarely do they remove more than a few kilobytes from the total size of the registry.

In fact, technology journalist Ed Bott has claimed that no-one has ever successfully managed to measure any significant performance increase from the use of a registry cleaner. Any potential user of a registry cleaner must thus balance a probably negligible performance increase against the possibility of system instability.

A safer and more measurable approach to Registry performance is to defragment the Registry files using a Microsoft-supported tool such as PageDefrag.

[aalbaiz]

Yes, your computer will run better if you occasionally clean your Windows system registry.In slightly more technical terms, the registry is a database in which Windows keeps track of relationships between hardware, software and the operating system.

You need to use a registry cleaner every once in a while because, It was supposed to be an improvement on the collection of simple text-based INI files that stored Windows configuration settings, but too many pocket protectors got involved in the design and the result was an over-engineered, over-complicated mess that makes Windows much more fragile and harder for users to maintain. Since it is a single point of failure, problems with the Registry can make a Windows system slower, less reliable, unbootable, and in extreme cases can only be fixed by reinstalling the operating system.

REG CLEAN is a utility program included in Windows 95 and Windows 98. This program is no longer officially supported by Microsoft, but some users report that it works fine on Windows XP systems.

Thers is an software for this purpose called "RegSeeker"

RegSeeker is a highly rated (and free) registry cleaner that I like. RegSeeker is an aggressive cleaner, and in some cases may delete registry entries that are needed. Some RegSeeker users have reported that using a RegSeeker exclusion file can prevent it from making erroneous deletions

Before using any registry cleaner, I highly recommend that you create a System Restore restore point, and even better, do a full registry backup with the ERUNT utility. In some cases, aggressive registry cleaning can remove entries required for some programs to operate.

I should mention that technology experts have differing opinions on the value of registry cleaners. Some adamantly claim that they cannot possibly improve system performance. Others say they might help a little, but point out that in some cases they can cause damage as well. And of course others believe they can offer significant benefits. I tend to be in the latter camp, but recommend caution when using a registry cleaner. Choose the tool that suits your level of technical expertise, and do your preparatory backups.