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

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.

Two fallacies - orphaned registry entries have little or no effect on performance, and secondly, having orphaned registry entries have never ever caused me any problems - in fact I've never used one at all in 25 years of using Windows.

I'm afraid your assertions are a) wrong and b) in inexperienced hands down right dangerous.

25 years??? !!!!!!.

Do you really think that other members of this Forum believe your claim, I certainly don't.

Why is 25 years hard to believe? I have no trouble at all understanding that. 25 years ago  (1989), Windows had been out for over 5 years. The first computer I was trained on was in 1968 My first home built was a Intel 4004 in 1972. In the following 40 years I have never used a registry cleaner to fix one of my computers. Nor have I ever used on to fix a client's PC.  I have had to recover the messes that clients made of their PC's by using registry cleaners plenty of times. I've lost track, but certainly in the hundreds, and at least four times in the last month alone.

Out of curiosity, I have introduced various errors into the registry and tested various registry cleaners. Most failed miserably. I advise people not to waste their money on them. While they did slightly improve performance on XP, if a PC is improved by a registry cleaner, you most likely could gain a lot better performance by uninstalling the programs or re-installing windows. As others have said, the chances of making matters worse by using a registry cleaner are pretty high. If you can't solve a problem any other way, and you don't have time to rebuild the OS, then MAYBE, try CCleaner. Look at what it is going to change and then just apply one or two changes that seem to be related to the symptoms you are having. Most problems today on 7 and 8  can be solved with restore points. Registry cleaners are outdated.

I have to agree with the ones here who say they are snake oil.

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 Finland. 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.

Two fallacies - orphaned registry entries have little or no effect on performance, and secondly, having orphaned registry entries have never ever caused me any problems - in fact I've never used one at all in 25 years of using Windows.

I'm afraid your assertions are a) wrong and b) in inexperienced hands down right dangerous.

25 years??? !!!!!!.

Do you really think that other members of this Forum believe your claim, I certainly don't.

Why is 25 years hard to believe? I have no trouble at all understanding that. 25 years ago  (1989), Windows had been out for over 5 years. The first computer I was trained on was in 1968 My first home built was a Intel 4004 in 1972. In the following 40 years I have never used a registry cleaner to fix one of my computers. Nor have I ever used on to fix a client's PC.  I have had to recover the messes that clients made of their PC's by using registry cleaners plenty of times. I've lost track, but certainly in the hundreds, and at least four times in the last month alone.

Out of curiosity, I have introduced various errors into the registry and tested various registry cleaners. Most failed miserably. I advise people not to waste their money on them. While they did slightly improve performance on XP, if a PC is improved by a registry cleaner, you most likely could gain a lot better performance by uninstalling the programs or re-installing windows. As others have said, the chances of making matters worse by using a registry cleaner are pretty high. If you can't solve a problem any other way, and you don't have time to rebuild the OS, then MAYBE, try CCleaner. Look at what it is going to change and then just apply one or two changes that seem to be related to the symptoms you are having. Most problems today on 7 and 8  can be solved with restore points. Registry cleaners are outdated.

I have to agree with the ones here who say they are snake oil.

If you're really worried about orphaned registry entries (and there's absolutely no need to be as they have NO appreciable effect on computer performance) then the blame should be laid at the door of third-party software manufacturers who don't provide a proper uninstall routine...

Finally,

I agree with one part of your reply to "grunnvms's" post, (software manufacturers who don't provide a proper uninstall routine...).

Not so long ago I decided to uninstall  the "RealPlayer" I had. After the uninstall I ran my good "British registry cleaner". If I remember well, there was approximately 940 + registry Values that "RealPlayer" left over in the registry, and that Windows could not remove during the uninstall process. My registry cleaner offers 2 options, 1) fix the registry, 2) delete the left over values. When using the fix, the cleaner automatically backs up the registry. It did not delete approximately 50 + registry Values. I ran the registry again, and this time I choose the "delete" option. The delete option does not backup the registry. During the delete my registry cleaner alerted me on 3 different occasions that deleting a particular value up for deletion could damage the proper operation of my system(Computer). I couldn't care less, I had a "WindowsImageBackup" on my other hard drive. I deleted those 3 registry Values. Later on I turn off the computer. 4 or 5 hours later I turn on my computer and got the famous "Blue screen".

Two fallacies - orphaned registry entries have little or no effect on performance, and secondly, having orphaned registry entries have never ever caused me any problems - in fact I've never used one at all in 25 years of using Windows.

I'm afraid your assertions are a) wrong and b) in inexperienced hands down right dangerous.

25 years??? !!!!!!.

Do you really think that other members of this Forum believe your claim, I certainly don't.