Registry Cleaning tools

 I have  been a long time user of certain utilities that automate the general health status of the PC

This includes such cleansing as unnecessary file removal - registry cleaning - bleaching of free space among others.

Now I find that enhancement of such application may not include registry cleaning in the future.

As the application performs its tasks I observe the numbers of registry issues it appears to resolve.

I am now wondering ?

Is this all gimmickry?

If it is no longer done by this third party app then what ultimately happens to the registry?

Will it become corrupt?

Does W10 require this level of maintenance?

Are there Microsoft tools embedded or available to carry out these tasks - if indeed they are necessary at all.

It just feels a bit fake that I have believed that I was doing the right thing for a long time but now the "experts" at "******" are implying it is not necessary.

They didn't say that when they sold it to me - very much the opposite.

Was it ever necessary ?

Do Microsoft endorse such cleansing.

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Hi JustWilliammm
registry cleaners have never been necessary or a good idea, the potential for causing serious damage is greater than the benefits they claim.
it is good to know that the developers of this type of snake oil are realising that people are now aware of the risks.

Microsofts policy on the use of registry cleaners
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/256325....

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[1] Is this all gimmickry?

[2] Was it ever necessary ?

[1] Completely!

[2] Never.

[Does] Microsoft endorse such cleansing?

Let's ask them: Microsoft support policy for the use of registry cleaning utilities

Full disclosure: In my earlier days of being a computer user, there was no cleaning or optimizing tool I did not try. I loved 'em all. Here's the insidious thing about this software: Very often, when you use it, it seems like you're doing something good for your computer, or at the very least, it doesn't seem like you're doing any harm. But you very well may be doing harm, by making unsupported changes to your configuration, only you might not realize that until next month, or next year, or the next major update, when all of a sudden, for no reason at all, your computer starts acting weird, or crashes, or becomes totally unusable, because of an unsupported action taken by your cleaner/fixer/optimizer long ago. And by this time you have no idea what is causing the problem or how to fix it, if it's even fix-able.

And then some people make raving, foam-at-the-mouth posts here about how Microsoft destroyed their computer, and where can I find a lawyer, etc. when they had it coming all the time.

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Many thanks for your reply.

All very enlightening - as is the other responses I have had to this topic.

The advice is overwhelmingly against the practise - and I respect these opinions coming from community members offering their advice and experience for free - not to mention Microsoft themselves.

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Many thanks for your reply.

All very enlightening - as is the other responses I have had to this topic.

The advice is overwhelmingly against the practise - and I respect these opinions coming from community members offering their advice and experience for free - not to mention Microsoft themselves.

Interesting that you appear to be from the same stable in that you have tried lots of these optimizers over the years.

I take it from your text that you no longer subscribe to any idea of registry cleaning or indeed any other automated cleaning tools.

If I am to follow your lead and dispense with such utility programmes there is still surely some attention required to maintenance - example - clearing temporary files,  bleaching etc. It's not like we are going to run out of disk space these days so I wonder if any of it is necessary ?

De fragging was an issue that I remember from early years that was a popular fad that did appear to have a positive effect on performance - or is it that NOT defragging would eventually lead to poor performance. I believe that was a Microsoft feature then - but having become a slave to this utility cleaner idea doing everything I wouldn't know if it still exists.

I am aware that there are cautions wrt to SSD's but  where the more  traditional hard disks are concerned I presume they still periodically benefit from defragging  -  or do they ? 

Many thanks for jump starting my brain - I will continue to  do more reading.

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Many thanks for your reply.

All very enlightening - as is the other responses I have had to this topic.

The advice is overwhelmingly against the practise - and I respect these opinions coming from community members offering their advice and experience for free - not to mention Microsoft themselves.

Many thanks for jump starting my brain - I will continue to  do more reading.

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... there is still surely some attention required to maintenance - example - clearing temporary files,  bleaching etc. It's not like we are going to run out of disk space these days so I wonder if any of it is necessary ?

Windows and hardware in general has advanced to where very little regular maintenance is needed, if any at all.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I used to follow a detailed regimen of maintenance procedures that took many hours to complete. And I used to do this every week. It's no exaggeration to say that I spent more time maintaining my computer than actually using it. Very little of that obsession remains. (I'll tell you what remains later.) Let's go over some of what I used to do, and I'll explain why it's not necessary.

RAM: I used to run Memtest64 - a popular memory tester. Today's RAM is so reliable and sophisticated that the chances of coming across defective RAM modules are less than negligable.

Hard Drive:  I used to defrag the c**p out of my hard drive until my Diskeeper interface looked like a stack of colored Legos. Even then all that defragging was unnecessary, and I definitely spent more time defragging that I could possibly save over the drive's lifetime by doing that much defrag.

Today's HDD hardware is much more robust than in earlier HDDs and the firmware is much more sophisticated. Years ago PC professionals started discussing whether defragmentation was needed at all. Today we know that defragging beyond what little Windows does on its own is completely unneeded.

For the same reason, there's no need to run CHKDSK or any of the other 'disk health' utilities that are still being marketed today.

SSDs, of course, work completely different from HDDs, so none of the HDD procedures apply. Defragging, in particular, is an excellent way to shorten the life of an SSD.

For years, HDDs and SSDs have been shipping with an industry standard utility called S.M.A.R.T. which continuously monitors the drive for signs of impending trouble. S.M.A.R.T. will alert you in the very unlikely situation that your drive may have a problem.

Clearing caches: A cache, by that name or any other name, is simply a place where files created for temporary use are stored. After their temporary need is fulfilled, they are useless. Like empty drinking cups. They do absolutely no harm to your computer. Sure, they occupy space on your hard drive, but it would take many years of accumulation before you run out of drive space due to caches. And since Windows clears caches on its own, you'll never get to that point anyway.

From time to time, you may need to clear your web browser's cache - but that isn't a maintenance procedure. Since browsers check their caches for web content to avoid downloading the same thing twice, you'd clear that cache if you want your web browser to get a new copy of the page.

And that was only the tip of iceberg for me. I was just getting warm.

If there was ever a time when all that maintenance was a good idea, that time has long gone. For today, here's the unvarnished, unpleasant truth: There are people who still haven't learned how to operate their computers correctly, so they cause themselves all kinds of trouble. Instead of learning how to use their computers, they run to fixit/cleaner/optimizer utilities, which won't save them from themselves and are only likely to make a bad situation worse.

So what's my remaining obsession? I still like to have only the absolute bare minimum of software that starts with Windows. Here's my Startup tab from Task Manager:

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Many thanks for that concise account.

Quite refreshing.

My suspicions were very much in line with you but I just hadn't had the confidence to believe this was the way with modern computers.

I do clear my browser history on exit by default - ensuring that any useful links/information I want is  added to favourites.

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Please remember that a computer is not a human, and doesn't need the same kind of maintenance as a human.

A human benefits from regular washing and shampooing - not a computer.

A human works faster with less to carry around - not a computer.

To wean yourself off registry cleaners in a hurry, try this experiment:

  • Install a brand new, fresh, untouched copy of Windows is a virtual machine.
  • Run your favorite registry cleaner on that copy of Windows.

Look at all those 'errors' that the registry cleaner found! How dare Microsoft include so many errors in a brand new copy of Windows!

Now restore that same, brand new, pristine copy of Windows in the virtual machine, and run a different registry cleaner on Windows. Holy cow! Look at all those 'errors' in the registry! What's wrong with you, Microsoft? So many errors in a brand new copy of  ... wait a minute.

The second registry cleaner found errors that the first registry cleaner apparently missed, and the first registry cleaner found errors that the second registry cleaner missed. How can that be? Should you perhaps try a third registry cleaner as a tie-breaker?

On the other hand, if these registry cleaner companies are so smart - smarter than Microsoft, it seems - why don't they write their own registries for us to install? Heck, they should write their own operating system. Or maybe Microsoft should hire their developers for big bucks to 'fix' Windows and put the registry cleaning industry out of business.

Or maybe there's something about registry cleaners that is fundamentally wrong?

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Last updated February 13, 2021 Views 2,207 Applies to: