Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear to
be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?

Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
"clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
>
>
>

And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left behind
when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl? I went
into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds of sh!t
on my machine.

"Unknown" <unknown@unknown.kom> wrote in message
news:iPbbj.71405$RX.33409@newssvr11.news.prodigy.n et...
> Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
> "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
> news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
>> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
>> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
>> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
>> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
>>
>>
>>
>
>

"clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?

Registry cleaners are unlikely to improve the performance
of your machine. If you're lucky then they will make a big
noise about removing x thousand unnecessary registry
entries, which will have no effect on the PC's speed. If
you're not so lucky then they will cripple your machine.

If you really want to get Windows into a healthy state
then you should do this:
1. Back up all important files to an independent medium.
2. Do a sample test recovery of some backed up files.
3. Include your EMail files in Steps 1 and 2.
4. Re-install Windows from scratch, allowing your disk
to be formatted.

clintonG wrote:
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left behind
> when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl? I went
> into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds of sh!t
> on my machine.

www.ccleaner.com Use at your own risk. It's free.

Alias
>
> "Unknown" <unknown@unknown.kom> wrote in message
> news:iPbbj.71405$RX.33409@newssvr11.news.prodigy.n et...
>> Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
>> "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>> news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
>>> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
>>> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
>>> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
>>> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

this is a beta but dedicated
to Vista. It should make
a restore point before
making any changes but
you might want to take
the extra step:

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/center/whatsnew.htm

i'm not sure what options
you have with this version,
but with the winxp version
one could select the custom
option and skip everything
except for the registry scanner.

--

db ·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·..><)))º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><)))º>¸.
><)))º>·´¯`·.¸. , . .·´¯`·.. ><)))º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><)))º>


..


"clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after these
> years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of utility
> though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if anybody has any
> comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear to be old from
> 2003-2004 so what's up?
>
>
>

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:12:37 -0600, "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com>
wrote:

> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear to
> be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?


I strongly suggest you avoid using any registry cleaning program. They
are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the registry isn't needed and is
dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't use any registry
cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of registry
cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.




--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:36:49 -0600, "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com>
wrote:

> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left behind
> when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl?


What you call "litter" is not what is slowing down your computer.
There are many possible reason for a slowdown, but probably the most
common these days is malware infection.


> I went
> into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds of sh!t
> on my machine.


A registry cleaner will not remove what msconfig shows you.



> "Unknown" <unknown@unknown.kom> wrote in message
> news:iPbbj.71405$RX.33409@newssvr11.news.prodigy.n et...
> > Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
> > "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
> > news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> >> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> >> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> >> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> >> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
> >> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

clintonG wrote:
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left
> behind when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a
> crawl? I went into msconfig this morning for example and there's
> still all kinds of sh!t on my machine.
>

Find the cause of the slowdown and fix it.

Whatever is causing your degradation, it's not the registry.

There have been no (none, nought, nada) reported cases of a registry cleaner
doing any good (except providing some level of satisfaction to the
obsessive-compulsives) and thousands of instances of disaster.

Your choice.

Have you done disk cleanup? Defrag? In msconfig remove all that you don't
need on startup.
"clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:e$V7$EMRIHA.3388@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left
> behind when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl?
> I went into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds
> of sh!t on my machine.
>
> "Unknown" <unknown@unknown.kom> wrote in message
> news:iPbbj.71405$RX.33409@newssvr11.news.prodigy.n et...
>> Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
>> "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
>> news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>>> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
>>> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
>>> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
>>> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web
>>> appear to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

clintonG wrote:
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left
> behind when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a
> crawl? I went into msconfig this morning for example and there's
> still all kinds of sh!t on my machine.

Chances are that most, if not all, of that stuff in msconfig has nothing
whatsoever to do with components left over from uninstalling software.

If you're interested in researching what these entries are to see which
ones are worth disabling, see:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/

and

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Taskl...s/tasklist.htm

You also need to take out the trash (clear temp files) and defrag the
hard drive if you haven't done so already. There are a few different
ways to clear away temp files from within Windows (Disk Cleanup, for
instance). I personally like Ccleaner, which has a very user-friendly
interface:

http://www.ccleaner.com/

Just use the main feature of cleaning temp files. Don't use the Issues
feature (not necessary and it's possible it might mess things up!).

The most important thing is to make sure you're free of malware. *That*
is what more than often slows things down.

Here is a good overall resource concerning speeding up slow computers:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

clintonG wrote:
> Windows Rot is killing me.


There's no such thing, actually. What do you mean by the use of this term?

> XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> these years of install and uninstalls.


So delete the unused files, clean out temporary files, and defrag the
hard drive.


> I have never used this type of
> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear to
> be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
>
>
>


A registry cleaner - even a safe one, should such ever be developed
- is an exercise in, at best, futility. There is no real need for
registry cleaners, other than to provide a profit to their
manufacturers. On rare occasions, registry cleaners can be, in the
hands of a skilled technician, useful, time-saving diagnostic tools.
Otherwise, they're nothing but snake oil.

Why do you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry? What
specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some program's
bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can be fixed by
using a registry cleaner?

If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would
be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the
specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. After
all, why use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally,
the manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely
to have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make
multiple changes simultaneously. The only thing needed to safely clean
your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.

The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences. One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change.

Having repeatedly seen the results of inexperienced people using
automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user. If you lack the knowledge and experience to
maintain your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry cleaner,
no matter how safe they claim to be.

More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained, inexperienced
computer user, does any real good, whatsoever. There's certainly been
no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such
products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
or stability. Given the potential for harm, it's just not worth the risk.

Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's no
real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
non-existent benefits.

I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to make
any changes automatically. But I really don't think that there are any
registry cleaners that are truly safe for the general public to use.
Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools simply are not safe
in the hands of the inexperienced user.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

clintonG wrote:
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left behind
> when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl?

By deleting unused files and defragging the hard drive. The registry
is irrelevant.


> I went
> into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds of sh!t
> on my machine.
>


And MSConfig told where it was located, so you know exactly what to
remove.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

Dont use any registry cleaner

--
Newbie Coder
(It's just a name)


"clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:e$V7$EMRIHA.3388@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> And how would you suggest getting rid of all the litter that is left behind
> when uninstalling software that drags the machine down to a crawl? I went
> into msconfig this morning for example and there's still all kinds of sh!t
> on my machine.
>
> "Unknown" <unknown@unknown.kom> wrote in message
> news:iPbbj.71405$RX.33409@newssvr11.news.prodigy.n et...
> > Simple comment: DO NOT USE A REGISTRY CLEANER.
> > "clintonG" <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote in message
> > news:uoLhe3LRIHA.3940@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> >> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> >> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> >> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> >> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear
> >> to be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>

On Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:12:37 -0600, clintonG wrote:

> Windows Rot is killing me. XP Pro SP2 needs a good house cleaning after
> these years of install and uninstalls. I have never used this type of
> utility though. Any recommendations? I'm also running Vista now too if
> anybody has any comments in that context. The "reviews" on the web appear to
> be old from 2003-2004 so what's up?

AUMHA Discussion: Should I Use a Registry Cleaner?
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099

Note the comments from Mark Russinovich and the reference concerning ERUNT.

'nuff said.