What is the BEST Registry Cleaner for Win 7 Ultimate or Pro 64 Bit version OS ?

I happen to agree.  I tested the company's out one day by doing a fresh install of the windows XP Pro and windows 7 64bit.  After doing all updates and having no personal information in the system I called several. Registry fixer, Registry Pro. and even used Norton, and others.  They all swore by their product and said that the system needed cleaning.  However, what was it cleaning then if there was only the OS that was there???  Some claimed that I even had virus and malware on the system.  YET, none could explain why this would have happened to an OS that was just installed.  Even took them to the date; cause you can show them when the OS was installed.  That is when I just stopped using them all together. I believe that all the Security systems out there should also remove them from the software as well.  It is unnecessary, a waist of money, and can do more harm than good.

Thank you for the P2P. and keep teaching and educating one another.

Registry cleaners aren't the only snake oil out there.

Partition managers seem to attempt to be honest, but like VitoLombard , I did some testing.

Format a new volume on any un-allocated space on a HDD Using Windows Disk Management.

There are 10 hidden files on the volume you just created. You can't see them using explorer or any program that uses the windows API. You need a program that can access the hardware directly.

Some of these are:

$Secure:$SDH

$Secure:$SHS

$TOPS:$T

../$Extend/$RMMetaDadata$Txflog\

$Bitmap

$MFT

The "$" indicates a system file. And, **NO!**Settings in explorer for showing hidden or system file will not make them visible.

The ":$XXX is not an extension, it is a stream name. Files can have more than one stream.

Format the same drive again using your favorite partition manager. You will have to find the right tools to examine the files and compare them. It is time consuming and only a few people ever need to do it, but, if you did, you would be shocked at what you find.

If you want, you can look up those file names on Google. What you find will scare you to death.

I'll save you some time and just point out a couple things those files do.

One of them records disk drive characteristics, the capabilities of the drive hardware, That includes what the drive can do on the disk controller on your motherboard at the time it was formatted. Copy that (volume/partition) information using some fancy partition manager and, you better pray the third party software knows how to rebuild the file for the drive, motherboard and drivers you are using.

There is a bitmap that shows the available unused sectors, And a bad-sector bitmap, they are stored in different formats because the bad sectors and available space are measured differently. The windows format translates the bad sector data and marks the corresponding sectors in the $Bitmap as unavailable. If your third party program copies a partition to another physical drive, or even another spot on the same drive. it will have to remap the bad sectors into the $Bitmap. If it doesn't do it correctly, (of just doesn't bother to do it at all) , you will get errors writing to bad sectors that are marked good, and waste good sectors that are marked as bad. Worse, all the raid in the world will be fubar.

The Metadata for your files are stored here. If they, or their indexes are just copied to a new larger drive  by your partition manager, or are simply left out, then all those pictures that you tagged with the date taken, camera model, added comments, edited,  or tagged people in, could get lost or SCRAMBLED.

The fact is, most of those hidden files need to be built on the system you have the drive installed in using the OS you intend to use. Some of those partition managers I checked, simply filled the drive with some of those hidden files that were copies of the files from some other COMPLETELY DIFFERENT drive. Sometimes  they  just set up the basic partition info for a UNIX, Linux or the XP operating system. I've even found brand new OEM and retail boxed drives come from the factory with incorrect partition info. Worse yet, I have found brand new pre-built  systems, formatted  with the files from a earlier model of the PC that had a different brand, size and characteristics of the drive. Having the wrong format usually means the system SEEMS to work just fine, until the drive gets full, or you try to upgrade an OS, or you try to recover a backup, or you launch some new program that is cataloging your precious photos and all those old home movies, or you get a update and  after it reboots you get a blue screen of death.

I've found I can build systems that run 5, 10 and even 20 years without ever having a problem. The starting point for building a reliable computer, or even preparing a new pre-built PC is to format all the drives using the OS. From there on, I avoid all third party programs that modify the OS or the drive format. That includes registry checkers, disk cleaners, partition managers and God Forbid, those programs that claim to have a magic button that will make your computer run faster, remove all viruses and dispense solid gold coins out of the DVD player slot. 

I keep telling Jack there are no magic beans, no pot of gold at the top of the beanstalk or magic fix all button, but he sees those ads on TV and keeps bricking his moms computer.

BTW -  If you just want to just SEE those files, format a partition, run CCleaner, analyse the new partition, click on one of the purple squares in the fragment map and then click the "Files" tab. This is not an endorsement of CCcleaner or any other third party utility for the purposes of repairing a system, but it will let you check to see if those "dollar sign" files are all there.

if you want a registry cleaning software you can try this one it might be what you are looking for

http://bit.ly/1KQZprJ

I happen to agree.  I tested the company's out one day by doing a fresh install of the windows XP Pro and windows 7 64bit.  After doing all updates and having no personal information in the system I called several. Registry fixer, Registry Pro. and even used Norton, and others.  They all swore by their product and said that the system needed cleaning.  However, what was it cleaning then if there was only the OS that was there???  Some claimed that I even had virus and malware on the system.  YET, none could explain why this would have happened to an OS that was just installed.  Even took them to the date; cause you can show them when the OS was installed.  That is when I just stopped using them all together. I believe that all the Security systems out there should also remove them from the software as well.  It is unnecessary, a waist of money, and can do more harm than good.

Thank you for the P2P. and keep teaching and educating one another.

Plenty of malware using screens to make users think something is happening but what is happening?

Screen can show anything not necessarily relative to what user is viewing.

What I do is save important stuff on a partition or USB storage. Then format my C: drive and restore OS.

My PC came with Win 7 Premium installed. Replaced HD and got what were called "restore disks". Problem was with all the updates, hundreds of them!

Guess I could buy a more recent version Win 7 as the newer versions (8 and beyond) are not so great  why did MS name latest version "Cloud"? Guess it is so confusing and F''ed up name fits..

Hi Bob.

I really enjoyed reading your reply. I believe the majority of computer users at one time have in fact purchased (mostly on line) a registry cleaner. But did they take the time in researching the product they were going to purchase? (Pros, Cons, availabilities of trial periods, options/choices in the operational procedures and other options of that registry cleaner and so on. Price is also a factor to consider !, sometimes paying a bit more, will give you a better and more stable product. Sometimes, also buying from an oversea country ( United Kingdom or a European country ) will reward you with a better product.

I, for example purchased my registry cleaner from England. I did my home work/research and was rewarded with a good product. It has never let me down nor mess-up my system or my clients PC's(except for once, when I intentionally ignored it's warnings, cautioning me not to delete 3 registry Values, doing so could damage the proper operation of my system. So theoretically, I'm the one  who mess-up my system, by intentionally ignoring it' warnings, not the registry cleaner ).

In conclusion, not all registry cleaners are "Snake oil". Not to forget, I also use "CCleaner", but no LONGER for registry cleaning. It doesn't even achieve 15% of what my registry  cleaner cleans ( Registry Values ). I like the "CCleaner" but only for other cleaning functions.  

Thanks Serge.

Bye the way, I followed your profile and read all your posts and most of the threads there. All very interesting stuff. I found myself  agreeing with so much of your point of view. Maybe it has something to do with my age, it's the same as yours.

I made a note to myself that should I need to examine a registry, I will check out what's available from the UK, Maybe I missed the one you mentioned. Only some of them actually warn you, or even give you a clue as to what they plan to modify. I certainly did not try every one out there. Implying that ALL of them are snake oil was incorrect on my part, I didn't say "all", but,  I should have said "most" or perhaps "many".

To be fair, registry cleaners are not the worst things you can waste time and money on. And, are useful in the hands of an experienced tech like yourself. While "most" are generally not needed, and "sometimes" a few of them may make matters worse, they are not the worst things out there. Bundled suites of  registry cleaners, malware removers, anti-virus protection, disk defragmenter and other tools are being sold and advertised constantly on TV. They promise a magic button that does everything but make rainbows come out your butt. The gullible public still believes in the magic beans with the pot of gold at the top of the bean stalk. They claim to clean up the registry, but often are old command line programs that may not have even been designed for your version of windows. These "one button wonders", package several free programs, along with calls to existing Windows functions and utilities behind a new GUI interface, slick advertising and a high price. Often the parameters they send to the commands are not correct for your hardware. "Some" ( Ok, MANY) of them report errors that didn't exist and like to tell you they fixed them. One anti-virus company had to admit in court that they reported non existent viruses, then tried to argue that it was only to give users a sense of confidence in the software. The only problem was, they wanted you to "upgrade" you to protect the PC against any further viruses. The last thing a IT person wants to see when he turns on a client PC is that they tried to "fix" the PC themselves with some registry checker, virus remover or magic button they saw advertised on the wrestling channel. You know the kind of clients I'm talking about. The ones who managed to install three free anti-virus programs from those really bad download sites, and the last one was a Trojan.

I see several recommendations for CClean. I think it would be useful if you mentioned your favorite by name, as the UK reference didn't narrow it down for me.

Bob,

great reply post. You accurately describe the misleading's and trickeries  some of those on line software vendors are using to trap naïve prospects in buying their products. Most of ( not all ) the stuff they are selling is already incorporated in WINDOWS, example: "Disk defragmenter". I'm going to mention now the registry cleaner's name I am using. It's called: "jv16 PowerTools 2014", it's from "Finland", not "England" as I mentioned in my previous post ( old age is catching up with me ). I don't know if it's OK to give out links in the Community?, but here it is anyway: "www.macecraft.com".

It's a bit complex to use it for a novice, but for you, it should be no problem using it. Reading and remembering  all the instructions in the install process and all the options it offers will depend on the choice(S) you make. Also when on their site find the page where there is the 60 days trial ( full version ), and download it from that page.( but first, on the first page displayed, click on the big shinny white letters on the left side : "jv16 PowerTools 2014" and read the whole page ).

Good luck.