Do registry cleaners really improve speed?

No GlobalForce, no bench marks, sorry.....
The only example that I can give is the over all performance of the computer.
When the computer is new the Windows Registry Database has little or no "White Space", so everything is fast, Bootup, Shutdown, Applications opening, and etc.
As the "White Space" accumulates the system starts to become sluggish, not as peppy and zappy as when it was when new.
Now "White Space" is only an contributing factor to System slowdown, not the sole reason or factor.
As with any Database, remove the "White Space" and compress the Database, and the reliability and speed improve.

It would be like an Secretary setting at her desk, the Secretary has all sorts of notes about her desk in an neat order. The Boss calls the Secretary into the office and asks
the Secretary to bring all the notes with them. The Secretary knows where all the notes are and in an couple of swoops gathers up all the notes and is on their way.
Now over time some of the notes become invalid or obsolete. The Secretary does not discard the invalid or obsolete notes and continues to add more notes to the orderly collection.
The Boss once again calls the Secretary into the office and requests all the notes, the collection has now become large, it takes the Secretary two trips to carry all the notes.
The Boss complains it is taking the Secretary to much time to gather up all the notes. The Secretary discards some of the invalid or obsolete notes from the collection leaving
empty spaces on the desk where there were once notes. The Secretaries collection of notes are now scattered amongst the desk and out of the once orderly but large collection.
Again the Boss calls the Secretary into the office and requests all the notes. The Secretaries once neat little piles of notes are now scattered all over the desk. It takes the
Secretary some time to sort through and gather up all the notes. The Boss complains that the Secretary is still taking too much time to provide the notes in spite of now making
only one trip. The Secretary has had enough, the Secretary is missing coffee breaks because of the time involved in gathering up the valid notes. The Secretary decides to gather
up all the valid notes and place them closer together in neat orderly piles once again. It is Monday Morning, the Boss calls the Secretary into the office and requests all the notes.
The Secretary knows where all the notes are and in an couple of swoops gathers up all the notes and is on their way. This reliable and consistent ability of the Secretary to deliver
upon request the valid notes to the Boss in less time continued all Week. The Secretary was able to relax and enjoy coffee breaks and on Friday received an Raise and an trip to Paris.


HKEY1952

 

Thanks for the link GlobalForce.
I'm using MaxBlast for imaging.
Erunt is a great suggestion though.
I'm contemplating compressing the registry. Before that I'm going backup using Erunt.

 

YES, Amust Registry Cleaner and Registry First Aid Platinum can backup and restore individual entries from the backup.
Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Online Safety Scanner offers to create an System Restore Point.


HKEY1952

 

You got it Tester! Now for Hkey - restore in the event the system doesn't boot?

 

In my case, I can attest that Uniblue's Powersuite 2009 (Registry Booster + SpeedUpMyPC + DriverScanner) made a noticeable speed increase.

I had already used numerous other PC cleanup and registry scanners, such as Wise, Auslogics, MS Onecare, CCleaner. Of those I still use CCleaner and MS Onecare, but you have you be careful. None had previously made a real noticeab;e difference, although I do believe they were cleaning up what the claimed to clean up.

 

Registry First Aid Platinum.....YES


HKEY1952

 

Bootdisk? That'a ('cause none'a these dern things should be'a) payfer?

 

Restore from Windows Recovery Console, command line


HKEY1952

 

Like Erunt. Not that I've checked but ... that First Aid Platinum a payfer?

 

Yes Sir.....and highly recommended


HKEY1952

 

Wow! I had no idea my question would generate so much response.

One of the reasons I was asking about this was because my grandmother's computer is running slow, again. This keeps happening every year with her custom built computer. She seems to think that cleaning the registry will greatly improve the speed. I personally don't think that's going to work or is the problem. But then, I didn't want to put a lot of time into diagnosing the problem only for it to end up being the registry. So for now, I'll use CCleaner to scan the registry and see if there's anything there that might be causing a problem. But I won't bother cleaning or fixing anything right now.

I think so many of these software companies advertise that their registry cleaners will greatly improve speeds and people just believe it. Or at least, maybe the average user believes it. Then they end up messing up their computers. But that's just my opinion.

 

ohblu, Have you defragged the hard drive lately?

 

Try this:

Boot into Safe Mode
Be sure to show hidden files and folders and unhide protected operating system files first

Delete the contents of the folder C:\Windows\Temp\ -the contents not the folder
Delete the contents of the folder C:\Windows\Prefetch\ -the contents not the folder
Delete the contents of the following folders in all accounts -the contents not the folder

Cookies
History
Temporary Internet Files
Temp
Recent
UserData

Boot back into an regular Administrative Account and Defrag the System


HKEY1952

 

Thanks, I try to regularly clean out the temp folders and stuff like that. It never has any noticeable affect on performance.

I'll have to check to see if the HD needs to be defragged. I don't think she does that anymore. But from experience, even if it needed it, it's not going to cause the computer to run THAT slow. Or at least, I've never seen that happen.

I think the problem is something like a corrupted user profile, a questionable game she installed, or the way she deletes programs.

Last week she needed to uninstall AOL and then install the latest version. So she went through the proper steps to uninstall it. But for some reason it didn't work. So she goes in and starts deleting all the AOL, AIM, and America Online folders. Then she's starts uninstalling programs that start with the letter "A" even though she doesn't know what they are. I was like WTF. I didn't say anything though. I really didn't see the point considering how thick-headed she is.

She installs a lot of games from websites like Yahoo and BigFishGames. She has about a ton of games on there she bought, downloaded and installed from websites. So who knows whether they're safe or not. But I'm fairly certain her computer doesn't have any malware. I'm gonna scan it again though.

It's really weird because she has two computers but only has problems with the newer, custom built computer. And several other relatives use her other, older computer and install stuff on there. So the other computer would be more likely to have problems, but it doesn't. That's kind of strange.

 

Have you checked the services and programs that are activated at startup?
If she installed some programs that have auto services included like auto-updaters etc.. that may be causing drag or a slow down.

A registry cleaner may help if it finds traces from improperly un-installed software.
I'd be curious to hear what you ultimately find.

 

I have not read the previous posts, so maybe much/all of the following has been said:

1. It is foolish to allow a registry cleaner to AUTOMATICALLY change anything.

2. It is OK to allow a registry cleaner to lists things that might need to be changed. But NEVER allow any change for which you do not know th consequences.

3. I find that it is safer to use a good registry editor, such as REgistry Workshop to search for particular things. For example, I have NO Symantec software on jmy Vista system, yet there are still about 900 entries referring to Norton or Symantec. Someday, I'll find then with Registry Workshop and delete them all.

P.S. I am not subscribing to this thread,

 

I'm not so sure about reliability (in my experience with MS SQL it does not, but for other people it may), but you get small returns (worth the effort long run) for compressing and reorganising the pages of a database. Not only do certain access patterns speed up, but also backups.
I don't know if the registry DB employs any kind of indexing, but queries that use the index suffer far less from internal fragmentation.

 

Something that's always bugged me is how can the removal of something unused increase performance ?

Its not used, its performance is zero.
If performance increases by a factor of x then it will always be the case that:

0*x = 0

The performance increase will be zero, always.

Now if you are cleaning a registry key that is somehow in use then the removal of that registry key COULD improve performance as performance before was non-zero.

The cleaning (that is repair or removal) of broken keys can be beneficial, but the cleaning of purely unused ones is futile.

 

Registry cleaners don't improve speed at all IMO. You can also do more damage than good if your not carefull. I like to remove obsolete keys that pertain to software that has been uninstalled, but that is just because I don't like it being there. A lot of these so called registry cleaners are scams, I am not going to name names, but I can think of about 3 or 4 off the top of my head.

 

Exactly defragment of the Registry is a relic from the old days, totally superfluous today.
I read from Orthy.de '10 tunning tips rays': http://www.orthy.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1512&Itemid=85 written in German by pco; Google translation here:

'4. Clean up the Registry: this tip is from the Windows98 time... When a key gone up, only one line from this file is deleted. There was a gap which was not re-filled. Surged to the Registry.
In WindowsXP, this is still in the classical sense, rather a DATABASE. Even when you delete such gaps will NOT occur. They are filled with new data. The Registry will remain small. Also, never searched the entire Registry, but only addressed the corresponding branch. This could theoretically Registry hundreds of megabytes in size, it would have little influence- precisely as in databases.
Registry defragmentation: a relic from the old days. Today: totally superfluous.'


PS. I do NOT use Registry defragmentation softwares (like IObit 'Registry Defrag' on my Advanced SystemCare/Utilities section).
Look also on Post #297 (Summary of HackCleaner activity) in the Wilders thread: 'Your NEW BEST Free Softwares Anti-Malware and Windows cleaners': https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=217453&page=12&highlight=registry defrag iobit
And orphaned Registry keys- I clean with CCleaner and WISE Registry Cleaner. Thorough cleaning work with these two softwares.

P.

 

Cleaning the registry is a constant process, for me. After every uninstall/update I go through and check for the older entries using CCleaner - after uninstalls I manually delete using regedit. Removing some of the Firewalls and HIPS i have found to be among the hardest to totally eliminate from the registry. If you are a happy chappy person that likes to try a few options before buying, I can imagine after a while your system is going to come to a grinding halt unless you use some reg cleaning.

I use ERUNT as a reg backup before I do any meddling.

 

Excellent point and do not underestimate this powerful registry cleaner from Microsoft, who could clean Microsoft's registry better than Microsoft?

Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Online Safety Scanner - Clean up scan for Registry and Hard Drive
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/center/cleanup.htm

Backing up the Microsoft Windows Registry is also good practice before any registry edits. Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Online Safety Scanner offers System Restore.
Compressing the registry is also vitally important for reliability and speed.

EDIT: The Vista version of Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner can be found here:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/center/whatsnew.htm


HKEY1952

 

Vitally? Yeah - nano, maybe milliseconds where speed's concerned. There's not much of an argument here without proof.

 

Please..... do not be silly and argumentative.....it is obviously your nature.....


HKEY1952

 

Fine, you can have the last word. It's apparent the OP got the answer they were suspecting.