Revo Uninstaller, IObit Uninstaller Alternative

The simple fact is that at least 99% of registry errors are completely harmless and there will absolutely no benefit gained from removing them - making it pointless to do so. Also, 99% of registry cleaners have trouble identifying errors, and will list some valid registry keys as errors. Deleting those keys can cause problems. The actual registry "errors" found, can be safely deleted - but once again there is no need to. CCleaner and Glary Utilities are two examples of software with registry cleaners which are unsafe to use.


It is very rare indeed to increase PC performance or reduce error messages and crashes by cleaning the registry. Over time the Windows registry will accumulate a lot of errors, particularly so if you install and uninstall a lot of software like I do. But all the junk accumulated in the registry really does not matter.

 

I am basing this off my own experiences with the program. As far as my usage, I have not ran into this problem.

For the time being, this has performed better for me than the others, but of course it is a new program and is too early to tell.

 

The majority of registry cleaners do not work, yes...I will agree to this. However, there is a small amount of utilities that do in fact work/clean. A user can manually clear registry entries to reduce the bloat, or they can go to a working registry cleaner that automates the process for them. TuneUp Utilities is a perfect example of a working registry cleaner. Something like Advanced SystemCare is an example of a registry cleaner that does not clean the registry errors correctly.

 

I agree, but once again cleaning the registry usually does not do much.

 

Yes, Usually they do not. I have ditched a lot of past Registry Cleaners due to this reason. I would say TuneUp Utilities and Vit Registry Fix are the two programs that have proven to be a working and safe alternative.

 

I'm happy with this program since there is no free 64 bit Revo and Advanced Uninstaller Pro takes a long time to scan for left overs. (wish there was an exclude files list for the program)

 

Me too, I find it to be working good for me. I believe the developer will be implementing this in a future release, as well as an update feature.

One thing I would like to see, is a non portable version.

 

I turn off deep scan in Vit as it seems to give a few false positives.

 

You're a Vit user?

I deselect the Deep scan option too.

 

roger_m already covered things well but I would still like to elaborate more. I'll try to be brief though, as to not go very offtopic. People use registry cleaners for two reasons: 1) to fix problems and 2) to gain performance.
If there is a problem that is being caused by a registry key/value that problem is usually rather specific. Registry cleaners however try (how often they succeed is a different matter) to be on the safe side and tend to remove the more generic stuff, so they are very rarely useful for fixing problems. When I said they are 99.99% useless I reserved 0.01% one the very off chance that a random scan and cleaning of the registry just might fix something.
Performance gains by cleaning the registry are even more of a myth. The registry is loaded into the system memory (1) and it's also a binary tree (2), which means that any given application has quick (due to 1) and direct (due to 2) access to any key or value. In other words: in order to access value X a process does not have to go through any other values before or after it. It can access it directly. So it really makes 0 (zero) difference how many keys/values there are in the registry.

Uninstallers tend to scan quite specific areas of the registry. Those are usually the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software keys. As for the folders, they tend to search the AppData (almost always) and LocalAppData (not very often) folders for remains.
Any user can simply launch Regedit and delete any remaining keys manually or just type %appdata%/%localappdata% in the Windows Explorer address bar and then delete any remaining folders. It's really no complicated. And uninstallers do not actually make it any faster or with fewer clicks, because the user has to go through some kind of wizard/steps, select scan mode and whatnot, and then wait for the scan to complete.

I created an installer that creates some files/folders and registry keys/values in various places but that does not remove them on uninstall, just so that I could test how various uninstallers do their job. It's not very refined and I would like to improve it by adding more locations in which to create leftovers. Still, it did give me a rough idea how effective uninstallers are. It wasn't a pretty picture.

I've always seen uninstallers as last-resort applications: one has tried many things and nothing has fixed the problem, and the system is kind of messed up anyway so one might as well give a "forced uninstall" a shot, as in "what do I have to lose" kind of situation. In that sense, uninstallers just might be of some use. However, for every-day use and replacement for the Windows uninstall panel they are indeed useless.

I cannot prevent anyone from using uninstallers or registry cleaners but I would like users to not use those applications for the wrong reasons. Believing that those applications actually help would be an example of a wrong reason. Now, if one knows that these applications are useless but for some reason would still like to use them because they give him/her a piece of mind (a superstition if you will), then so be it.

 

Excluded from this discussion seems to be Comodo Programs manager which IMO blows all of the others away. It runs as a service, uses very little resources, has forced uninstall, has a nice feature to save an uninstall with it's settings for later reinstall and you do not have to invoke the program (since it runs as a service) to monitor installations automatically.

Worth your look at it. It is my top pick for this category. I do have Geek Installer loaded as it has some useful features in addition to, besides it's speed and portability.

 

Ideally you would just use a drive imager.
In another thread they mentioned that it may be illegal to remove protected keys from your registry. Nothing further from the truth.
There is no difference between removing protected registry keys from your registry than to reimage your hard drive to a time before you used trialware or even reformatted and reinstalled Windows.

Don't let anyone tell you any different. If reimaging or reinstalling Windows is legal in your country then so is removing protected trialware keys.

I have yet to find a real uninstaller that actually worked.

At one time Microsoft did offer a free program that let you make images of your system and roll back if there was a problem. I can't remember the name but it worked flawlessly. The downside, you couldn't keep anything because it didn't allow permanent changes.

Registry change tracking programs are about as useless too.

No one makes a real program that monitors all changes made to the files and registry completely.

Now, here is a suggestion - use a virtual machine. You can make many of them. Try what you like. If you don't like it or it messes things up, just delete the virtual machine and all is well.

If you do like what you try then you should, morally and sometimes legally, purchase it. Then install it to your real copy of Windows.

Personally I use Linux and don't have those limitations. Nearly everything is legally free....

 

New version out:

Changes:
1.0.2.4 [3 June 2012] - Fixed saving of program settings (e.g. language)

 

Works on 64 bit. I'll have to try this program.

 

I use Geek Uinstaller.

 

It's good stuff, I think you'll like it

 

Which one are you guys talking about?

 

Over the years I have lost much more time to AVs which have misbehaved than I have to malware. Notably AVs which "cleaned" files which were false positives and necessary, and once a bad signature which caused the AV to consume all CPU resource (or so I remember, it was a few years ago) so you had difficulty killing it. The fixes may not have been terribly complex, but they were time consuming. Still, not as bad as a corrupted system from malware.

Most people may have no problems requiring registry cleaning, but some do. I had a very slow system that was resurrected after reg. cleaning. It came after years of installing and uninstalling software. At that time the cost of reinstalling the OS and the apps that I was using certainly made it worth the risk, since the system was becoming unuseable and I'd have to reinstall anyway.

Maybe you haven't found value added by cleaners and uninstallers but that doesn't mean there isn't any.
I've had few or no problems with ccleaner and a small number of problems with revo in the past.

 

1.0.3.5 [2 July 2012] - Minor interface improvements