Registry Cleaners and Glary Utilities --

[lonemountain]

Greetings. I know there are widely differing opinions on the benefits or dangers of registry cleaners and optimizers. I've been told by a computer shop I highly respect to avoid registry cleaners. (I used to use Registry Mechanic.) For the past six months or so I have used C-Cleaner with no apparent problems, although I don't run the registry side of it very often. Now to my question: I ran C-Cleaner about a day ago. I have now installed Glary Utilities 2.6.1 (which seems to be a nice package, by the way) for a look. When I run C-Cleaner now it indicates about 15 registry "problems" that need fixing. The Glary registry cleaner identifies 119 "problems". What is the prevailing opinion on Glary versus C-Cleaner? I'm going to settle on one or the other (or none, if that is the recommendation). I'm all ears (or eyes). Thanks . . . .

[Calum]

Personally I only trust CCleaner, as it's never caused me a single problem in the 3 or so years I've been using it.
It tends to err on the side of caution, only removing entries which are definitely not needed, whereas other cleaners are sometimes more aggressive.  While this isn't always bad, as they can remove more junk, they can sometimes cause problems.
I'm not saying CCleaner is totally safe, nothing is.
Just that I for one would trust CCleaner, and only remove entries it marks, and only after making a backup.
P.S. A lot of the cleanup suites out there are total rubbish and either don't help or make things worse.  Not implicating Glary, just saying be careful what you try.  Been there, done that, got the dead installs of Windows.

[qinghao]

it's never caused me a single problem in the 3 or so years I've been using it

this is most important!!!

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Also, Registry Optimizers might not be as safe (depending what they do).
If they are cleaning the registry and removing invalid entries, Ccleaner pretty much does the job.
If they are modifying the registry an any way, I wouldn't recommend it. For better or for worse.

[Calum]

Could you define what you mean there Carbon?
I'm not sure I follow you.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Just some experience of mine.

I tried a program that supposedly boosts the computer speed by modifying registry keys.
I tried it and it completely screwed up the computers functionality be removing sounds, icons and the computer took longer to boot up.

If you are going to try such a program, back up the registry beforehand!

[Calum]

All registry cleaners modify the registry, that's how they work, by removing entries they deem unnecessary.
For you to recommend CCleaner and then say "If they are modifying the registry an any way, I wouldn't recommend it. For better or for worse" is a contradiction, I just wanted some clarification.
I see what you mean now, you mean avoid cleaning programs that modify keys.
It's common sense to have a registry backup, a drive image and a backup of important files too, whether modifying the registry or not.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Yes, sorry. I should have said 'use caution when using programs that modify registry keys'.

[qinghao]

I support Carbon's opinion.
I used to do the same thing as him.I had made my system even worse before I do the "optimize",
after that I got a  conclusion --the best "optimize" is "leave it alone".
Do remember every time you change the registry the changes will be saved into registry also.
You can easy find this at this path "%userprofile%".
These file :ntuser.dat ,ntuser.log and ntuser.ini are used to the changes you made by now.
Simply ,the modify a VALUE's value,and the you restore it to origin.
These two changes will be change after you do it manually or with some software.
so,the way to "optimize" your system is do little change or
use a set of the three file:ntuser.dat ,ntuser.log and ntuser.ini  which saves no changes to overwrite the three file in the path "%userprofile%".
After that, all you changes will be lost.

[Broni]

IMHO...
1. CCleaner is the only registry cleaner, which I feel is safe, I've never had any problem after using it. I recommended it to many people, and I still have to hear any complain, yet.
2. Your computer performance won't gain any visible performance boost by using registry cleaner. If you're NOT experienced computer user, leave it alone. Even, if those cleaners create backups, but you're not experienced enough to know, how to restore your computer back to normal, if something happens, leave it alone.

[lonemountain]

A good friend of mine had a saying that I think is probably appropriate in this case: Sometimes "better" is the enemy of "good".

Thanks for the comments -- keep 'em coming.

[qinghao]

Sometimes "better" is the enemy of "good".

haha..

[alan1000]

All registry cleaners which are published by reputable, professional software companies are safe to run and will improve the performance of your computer.  You can run them and safely delete/fix anything they find without checking it first.

Examples include Glary Utilities, Advanced WindowsCare, and Ashampoo WinOptimizer.

These are well-researched, thoroughly debugged, professional-grade products written with the corporate market in mind, and enterprise pays good money to use them.  We are more fortunate because they are free for private use.  YOU NEED HAVE NO FEAR OF THEM.

The statement that registry cleaners do not improve computer performance is incorrect.  They don't do it by removing "registry bloat", because spurious registry entries will seldom or never exceed 1% of the total registry size anyway;  they do it by removing entries which are "toxic" or dysfunctional.

Example:  you might share a printer on a network.  The printer is uninstalled while your terminal is powered down.  When you reboot, your registry directs Windows to check up on the printer drivers.  They can't be found, of course, but the search will continue until it times out, which may take a minute or longer.  That's a minute extra on your boot time.  Every time.  There are a thousand examples of this kind which could be quoted, covering shutdown problems, stop errors, runtime errors, Shell32.dll errors...

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

The statement that registry cleaners do not improve computer performance is incorrect.

We never said that. Registry Cleaners like Ccleaner can have quite a big impact on the computer's speeds.

We are more fortunate because they are free for private use.  YOU NEED HAVE NO FEAR OF THEM.

However, there are many things that can make your computer different from all the computer they have tested them on.
Although they may be software from large companies, backing up and caution is still recommended.

[alan1000]

I accept your point, CD;  even using the same software and the same machine at home, I can never get two installations in a row to come out exactly the same way!

... as for backing up, I couldn't agree more.  If only more people understood the importance of a good backup procedure, a lot of the questions on forums like this one would never need to be asked.