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

I think that is rather lumping me in with an assumed section of the population who are mindless sheep.  It is not a matter of faith - it has been a matter of something that worked for me for many years, which is now no longer there, I have experienced issues since not having it there and was seeking a replacement solution.  I certainly didn't get any warm feelings after running a registry scan.  I usually had relief when nothing was found and interest if something was.  After Norton Utilities found over 2,000 registry errors I was horrified!  Because they clearly weren't registry errors (turns out they were system restore points).

My experience was, if I started having problems with things freezing and not loading properly, especially after installing or uninstalling a program, and I rant the Norton 360 registry scanner, it usually cleared 2 or 3 items, sometimes more like 9 or 10 and that solved the issue.  I have a feeling that most of the Utility programs are not as conservative as the scanner built into Norton 360.

Thank you - that highlights the issue.

I think I get the picture.

Microsoft devised the registry to store important information about Windows itself and applications. Normally important configuration files should only contain clean data.

However Microsoft did not want to invest in / forgot / could not be bothered with / was just to lazy to produce a utility that checks the registry for consistency and redundant clutter. Instead we just have a simple editor as the only way to do maintenance on the registry.

Those of us who think that a polluted registry file caused them problems are just imagining things, that can not be. Windows has been devised in such a way that it can deal with all that clutter in the registry. There's nothing wrong with loads of junk in the registry. It is not a bug in the design, it is a feature in the best of Microsoft tradition.

I'm happy to accept they are not necessary and don't do any good, but I got used to having one that was built into Norton 360 and had 6 years of problem-free computing.  I think that one must have been a lot more conservative than most.  If it's just for profit though, why does Piriform make CCleaner free?

Ad revenue?

I'm happy to accept they are not necessary and don't do any good, but I got used to having one that was built into Norton 360 and had 6 years of problem-free computing.  I think that one must have been a lot more conservative than most.  If it's just for profit though, why does Piriform make CCleaner free?