Oct

13

So I downloaded a "registry cleaner"...

Filed Under General, Software, Technical 

This comment prompted me to download a program called Uniblue RegistryBooster. Kim Komando said it was good. Heh.

c|net has a quote blurb on the Uniblue website that says:

This easy-to-use tool lets you remove faulty Registry entries that slow down your computer.

Removing a kilobyte of cruft should net you what, a gain of 10 nanoseconds for every 15,000 value reads?*
*: Actual value may vary**
**: Variance not guaranteed

I also don't think removing registry keys is the start to solving your Windows problems, but I'm going to run it for science!

As soon as I launched it, it performed its whole system scan.

A total of 311 invalid Registry entries were found on your System. Click on "Repair Registry" to fix all entries.

On the Overview tab, it says my registry health is low. Uh oh, I should be seeing errors and crashing all of the time, then, right?

I don't know if it's a function of not being registered, but since the window cannot be resized (giant skinned window with Vista style minimize and close buttons) and there isn't a horizontal scrollbar in the results area, I can't read the full path to most of the keys so that I can verify the results. Well, you can read the log file though. It opens an HTML log from Uniblue's area of your user profile's Application Data folder in your default web browser and it contains all of the information you need, should you actually know what you're looking at.

It found quite a few missing ActiveX/COM+/DCOM/OLE objects, which is the largest group of "errors" any registry cleaner can find in your system. This is because ActiveX, COM, and OLE (which all store and retrieve information to/from HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT) are so frequently used and are so frequently damaged (in one way or another). This could happen if you move the file to another drive or folder or if a module crashed while trying to register or unregister itself. The majority of what Dial-a-fix does is register ActiveX/COM/OLE objects, such as the components that run Windows Update. (Dial-a-fix tells the modules to self-register, this way, Dial-a-fix does not have to know the exact registry keys and values needed to make a module work again.)

Almost all of the ActiveX/COM errors that registry cleaners find can be ignored. There are a few things registry cleaners can figure out that are harmful to the speed of your system, but they don't occur very frequently. If you had a file type registered to a program that exists on a mapped drive and that network share was down but still listed as a mapped drive, you might get slowdowns as Windows tries to figure out where the share is. Registry cleaners are also able to remove invalid OpenWith entries, which is a good thing to do just to tidy the list of broken icons and to save Windows from having to check for non-existent locations. A lot of keys chosen for removal just contain MRU (most recently used) paths to things I have accessed using whatever program the MRU list is for. Removing these keys isn't really going to "repair" your computer.

Still, for the average user, cleaning this cruft will probably not visibly impact performance to the point that such a program should scan your entire system every startup.

At least RegistryBooster isn't taking up a lot of memory.

Another problem with registry cleaners is that you're at the mercy of the database and program version you have. Compounding this is that each registry cleaner program is third-party, meaning they all can have potentially differing opinions on what constitutes an invalid entry. There is the potential to ruin your computer by removing things that need to stay — many a registry cleaner has had to come out with program fixes and registry patches for things erroneously removed. I would hate to be a tech support person for a registry cleaning program. I'm sure there a lot of irate people who:

  • Have had things removed from their system that shouldn't be, and are having new problems because of it
  • Have other problems such as hard drive and memory problems and will blame the company for problems with their computer because the last thing they remember using was the registry cleaner program
  • Have other problems as mentioned above and corruption occurs after a registry clean because of interference from the faulty hardware
  • Have problems that can't be solved by a registry clean (which is to say most problems) and are upset that this program has not improved the performance or stability of their machine

Here's an issue I've found already, and I'm not very far through my results log:
RegistryBooster wants to remove HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Search\CrawlScopeManager\Windows\SystemIndex\DefaultRules\22 because it says "file:///c:\ " is a bad path. This isn't true - this is the format Windows Search uses for indexing rules. If I remove this stuff, I suspect Windows Search will forget how to search my system, and had I not read through the log, I would later wonder how it disappeared. I might not even connect its destruction with my use of a registry cleaner - another big problem. Obviously something has directed RegistryBooster to look here, yet it does not actually understand what it is seeing and recommending for removal.

When I chose to "repair" the registry entries, it told me I should make a backup, which is a good idea. The bad thing is that it is only going to delete all of the registry entries, not really "repair" them. What if the file can be found elsewhere on the drive? Should it scan my filesystem and put together the puzzle and point the key at the new location? It's probably difficult to decide when such a scan should be the answer, so instead of opts to delete every error that has been found rather than trying to fix it. Because of the endless possibilities, scanning for files and pointing erroneous keys to the findings is probably just as bad an idea as mass deletion.

I'm barely through the first few lines of the log and I have all of this to say - this should give you a clear indication of my opinion of registry cleaners. I'm giving this one a chance, but it seems like it's just like all the rest and has all of the same pitfalls as anything else.

I can give RegistryBooster one thing: it did find quite a lot of missing TypeLib entries that really are missing, although like I've said before, it's not really going to speed up my computer all that much. This is only a few kilobytes of text in my 35 megabyte registry.

I don't like that there isn't a "jump to value" context menu entry on each item in the results pane - it makes fact-checking take quite a bit longer.

I've also noticed that registry cleaners tend to find Explorer's "auto" file extension creation entries, and RegistryBooster is no exception. There's no point in removing auto entries as they will just come right back as soon as Explorer sees the file extension again.

It feels like it's very limited since I'm only testing the trial version, but I don't think I really need to see any more.

In the end, I can't really recommend this sort of program to anyone (no offense to Uniblue) and I did not end up removing any of the things it said I should. I can't really give it a 1-to-5 stars type rating, so I'll give it a rating of N/A.

There is one decent registry cleaner that I've found that generally does the same thing (finds COM junk and missing font entries, etc) and isn't too aggressive with its scans: CCleaner's Issues scanner. CCleaner's Issues scanner reminds me of one final point: registry cleaners don't take into account the things that they orphan from their first scan. After you remove 300 things from your registry, chances are that there is another 200 things that have become orphaned from the first sweep. If I ever wrote a registry cleaner (which I will not) I would have it check for "dependencies" and list them as sub-items of the main items, so that it basically says "if you choose to remove X, I'm removing Y also because it's orphaned by the removal of X".

*Anti-climactic cliffhanger ending*.

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Comments

9 Responses to “So I downloaded a "registry cleaner"...”

  1. # miekiemoes on October 14th, 2007 4:37 AM

    Some more opinions and facts about the Registry+cleaners posted here: http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099

    Example how a Registry Cleaner broke the Uninstall key in the registry:
    http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic=94644
    He really believed (as so many do) that using registry cleaners improve system speed.
    Anyway, he's never going to use a registry cleaner again *grin*

    Registry cleaners *may solve some problems if you know how to use it. Unfortunately most users don't know basics about the registry - click the "fix all" button and wonder why more problems appear afterwards.

  2. # midas on October 15th, 2007 12:08 AM

    thanks for the write up.
    I am going to take a stance on registry cleaners from now on, paid programs or not
    I warranty my work, but if a customer decides to use registry cleaners, open regedit, or use system restore, i just can't then.
    I have been guilty of using CCleaner's registry cleaner, but only when I have problems installing a program and etcetera.
    I do use ERUNT and NTREGOPT though on my personal computers. NTREGOPT doesn't clean the registry but rewrites it using built in windows functions apparently

  3. # Brian Pirtle on December 3rd, 2007 4:11 PM

    By accident (I had to buy it), I found a
    reg. cleaner that not only scans, makes a
    list of errors to be fixed (delete), but
    makes a second scan looking for repairs
    to the errors found in the first scan, and
    repairs them.

    Another feature in this program I like, is
    that it scans the entire hard drive (I have
    eight drives on one hard drive) for sources
    for reg. repair. When I installed my Windows
    XP disk into my L: drive, it picked right
    up on it.

    The name of the software is Registry
    Doctor. I found it three years ago while
    browsing MajorGeeks website and, if I
    remember correctly, ran around $20.00.

    Have a Great Day,
    Brian

  4. # Jason on March 27th, 2008 4:08 PM

    Anyone ever use a program called RegCure? I just bought it from http://www.pc-registry-repair.com but have yet to run it.

    Thanks
    -Jason

  5. # DjLizard on March 28th, 2008 7:09 AM

    It looks like the garbage I always find on customer computers. Did you buy it before or after reading this article? :P

    In my experience, registry cleaners are mostly bullshit.

  6. # Registry Repair Reviews on April 20th, 2008 2:05 PM

    Very informative piece. I use a registry cleaner, and have been for over three years now, but have never run into any problems using it (knock on wood!).

    What you had to say does make sense. Also, the part about auto file extention entries may explain why I see the same entries come up again and again for "repair" in the cleaner I use. I always wondered what that was about, and now your explanation makes sense (although I don't use IE but rather Firefox):

    "There's no point in removing auto entries as they will just come right back as soon as Explorer sees the file extension again."

    I used to think that perhaps the cleaner I bought didn't detect and recommend for removal enough items (as compared with other cleaners I'd downloaded and tested), but after reading your piece, I have to think twice about that. It could be that the cleaner I have is not all that bad after all. At least in three plus years of usage, I've never had to restore anything that I've removed, meaning that it hasn't wrecked the registry such that it caused any problems with the system.

    Glad I found your blog. Thanks.

    Thom

  7. # DjLizard on April 21st, 2008 7:19 AM

    Sorry, I should have been more clear: Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer is your Desktop, "My Computer", Start Menu / Taskbar. Windows Explorer is the one that creates the auto extension entries. Fortunately, Internet Explorer is not related to the auto entries stupidity.

  8. # Michel on May 29th, 2008 4:35 AM

    Have you ever tried

    1. Regseeker (http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm)

    2. Cleanup.exe (http://www.pcstress.net/en/default.asp?p=thanks&i=cleanup)

    I'm using these tools at my entire satisfaction.
    What's you view?

    Regds,
    Michel.

  9. # envis on August 21st, 2008 3:25 AM

    registry cleaners are bullshit!!! windows works fine it doesnt need an extra program to function properly, or if it did, this program would be included in it.

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