jv16, good or bad?

This is the recommended registry cleaner tool on the Kaspersky Forums

I was just about to buy it with the Platinum Package (free upgrades for life and can be used on up to 5 PCs that you own) but before hitting the buy button. I read this:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/review/987567453/1/view


There is a Myriad of bad reviews that are telling me this is a pile of junk

Can someone who has experience with it share some honest experience about it?

 

I'll assume you know/have come across both sides/views in the usual debate on registry cleaning (which will never end) so I'll skip that. Other folks will chime in on that of they want to. Here's my opinion of the program itself.

The program can be a bit buggy (with some of the components) but if you're looking into the registry cleaner part of it, it is the one of the few that I'd consider 'safer' over any other tools in the same league. (CCleaner is a different breed)

If you insist, I'll suggest to download the free JV16 PowerTools Lite 2011 (http://www.macecraft.com/powertoolslite2011/) which is based on the same engine or try the trial which is good for 60 days before you make your decision.

Disclaimer: No affiliation with Macecraft whasoever. Simply said, do whatever you want at your own risk.

 

Golden rule on windows registry: Less you touch it better it is.
Best to use imaging software if you tend to install too much junk on the system

 

Thanks for this info, safeguy. The free Lite version sounds good, and I've just downloaded it, though I have yet to install and run it.

 

I did analyze and clean my registry and the entries seem to be fine / safe

But when I clicked on the File cleaner, it didn't delete 2 very important things and I am wondering how come as these are 100% safe to delete:

1- C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download (These are temporarily downloaded setup files for Windows update that are no longer required after installation), they were completely ignored by jv16

2- C:\$username$\AppData\Local\Temp (all the folders/files in this directory were ignored whereas with CCleaner they get deleted as they are all temp files, how come?

 

Waste of money & time like any registry cleaner.

 

Thanks, guess I saved $70 USD tonight (coz I was going to buy the Platinum package)

 

personally i use it and love it. but if you wait and watch you can get great deals. i got mine for if i remember correctly like 20$ and yes 70$ is way to much. no need to spend that much, for the 19.95 i paid i like it. otherwise i would use ccleaner or auslogics seems to be pretty safe from my experiences, im of the other camp that i dont want all the junk left in the registry when removing programs etc and 99.9% of programs do not remove all the registry entries if any when you uninstall them or sometimes update to a newer version the old ones get left behind. i go as far as to manually remove many of those entries from the registry myself but that can also be dangerous if you are unshure which ones should go or not.

 

In an ongoing registry poll here at Wilders, more than 70% of respondents say they use a registry cleaner.
As safeguy says, it's the usual debate. But the OP has asked if anyone with actual experience with jv16 can share their findings.
I ran the jv16 PowerTools 2012 trial for a while on an XP machine and found that it slowed things down. Not much of a review, I know, but I was also turned off by the lofty price.

 

Well, if price tag is the issue, the free Lite is sufficient imo but if you insist on the whole program, you might need to look around the web...there have been promos (as in free) for the previous versions.

 

You can still find version 2009 at dottech for free
-http://dottech.org/freebies/18008/dottech-exclusive-free-jv16-powertools-2009/
The last time i checked the license file worked for versions 2010 and 2011 as well. And if you extract the files, the application is fully portable-for anyone interested

 

There is a setting in jv16 not to delete temp files for 30 days as a safety measure.

I've been using jv16 for years now and it is fine IF you know what you are doing and use the registry backup to cover yourself. It is quite good at compressing the registry and I used it once to recover a deleted file where no other tool would do it.

It is also wise to not get to agressive with it as it is very powerful and thus dangerous if mishandled.

 

I've used JV16 for a number of years, going back to before Macecraft took it over and it was still freeware. As safeguy (and others) noted, there's plenty of active debate over whether anyone should touch registry cleaners. But I agree that if you feel compelled to use one, JV16 is one of the safest ones around, at least when used in its default (versus "aggressive") mode.

There was one bad version a few years back (2005? 2007?) that was way too aggressive in what it flagged. But with that one exception it's been quite conservative and safe, and you'll probably find that most of what it recommends for removal are MRU's of one kind or another, especially installers which were deleted after successful installation of whatever.

 

I know a lot of you guys don't like using registry cleaners, I use Ccleaner and the odd time will download Auslogics or Glary to give a thorough cleaning, here is why. I tried to download a security program a few months ago, can't remember which one. it said it could not install or I couldn't use all the features, something like that, because I had Trusteer Rapport installed, I did try Trusteer several months earlier but had uninstalled it, manuallydeleted all the registry keys I could find, but it was still there somewhere I guess. So I try to clean out my registry as much as I can to avoid problems like this.

 

Excellent point.
I always try to make registry cleaning a part of the uninstall process, for the very reason you have stated.

 

From my own experience, registry cleaners gave me nothing but trouble in windows XP. If you are testing software a lot, maybe you should give it a try to Rollback Rx or Returnil.... Better yet, just re-image.

 

Before testing or using registry cleaning, compacting, or optimizing programs, make a backup of the registry and eliminate most of the risk. ERUNT works very well for this.

 

+1 Instead of using Erunt, I installed this one: Registry Backup http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/registry_backup.html It's working great!!

 

jv16 Power Tools reviews

 

that program gets detected by hitman pro as a trojan.so i removed it.

 

yeah that's where I read all the bad reviews initially

I started using Eusing Free Registry Cleaner and it seems to take a safe approach just like CCleaner but a bit better

will report back after a month of using it if it broke anything

 

Could be a FP.

 

Good.

 

Yes could be but i didnt want to take the chance.

 

I don't recommend this as it gives false positives. After spending 10+ years writing registry cleaners, you'd think that Jouni could do better than this.