Registry Cleaners

[Laser]

Yay or neigh?

Are they really that useful and do they speed up loading times significantly, and is it true that they can do more damage than good by deleting important entries?

[Maximus]

I used one called Registry Mechanic some time back and it seemed to do ok. It's a paid program, I think most of them are; I got it because they were giving away registrations for 24 hrs. I didn't have a problem with it deleting important entries, though it lets you review every change it makes before it makes them (each of some hundreds of them).

"do they speed up loading times significantly" - No, unless your PC is already bogged down way below its normal speed. In my experience, by the time a PC gets really loaded with junk, Windows is pretty hard to clean out effectively. Back everything up, reformat the disk and reinstall from scratch. I tend to do this on my PCs about every 6 months to 1 year, depending on how much I've used each one.

[Turky]

Back everything up, reformat the disk and reinstall from scratch. I tend to do this on my PCs about every 6 months to 1 year, depending on how much I've used each one.

[Laser]

alright, cheers

[Magyk]

Get CCleaner. It's free. It works. I like it.

Btw, I'm going to be a jackass and point out that it's actually "yea" and "nay."
Not "Yay" like a celebration, and "neigh" like a horse.

[Laser]

CCleaner is what I yews, I was wondering about it.

[GUARD!AN]

I yews registry mechanic regularly (~every 2-3 weeks) and reformat every ~6 months or so and my computers always boot/load really quickly, regardless of their specs.

[Maximus]

CCleaner is a good thing, tbh I didn't realize it also has a registry cleaner... it's probably a fairly basic one. I yews it irregularly, but it seems to work well.

[Max Rambone]

I yews CCleaner on virus-infected machines before running any scans.

No need in scanning a bunch of crap, ya know.

~archi