Registry Cleaners Revisited: The Final Chapter

Why is it that the topic of Registry Cleaners evokes near fanatical fervor both for and against? In this article I present a case for calm and rationality by offering some simple facts, as opposed to the usual biased and often baseless fanaticism.

Some time back I published an article entitled Choosing a Registry Cleaner. Although that article is old news by now (but still factually relevant), in the world of blogging it’s not unusual to receive comments weeks, months or even years after original publication.

When one publishes a lot of articles — especially on such wide-ranging topics as computer use, security and productivity — there is always the chance that someone will get the wrong impression from one article, because they haven’t read all your articles. The simple fact is no blogger can put everything that is remotely relevant — every caveat, warning, admonition etc — into every article.

I think that’s probably the scenario that prompted the following comment just received. I’ll quote the writer in full before commenting further.

NOTE: Although the writer of this comment provided his name, I’m not publishing it because I don’t want there to be any perception that I’m targeting someone personally. If the writer wants to reveal himself in a comment to this article I’m fine with that. But I am inclined towards the opinion that this would be a good time to close the book on the for/against registry cleaners argument. It seems to be a topic that attracts protagonists almost religious in their fervor, and I’m definitely not going to let this blog become a battleground, particularly when neither side has any chance of converting the other. By all means comment, but keep it sane and civil if you want to see it published.

Bill,

You really shouldn’t encourage people to use registry cleaners like you have done on the review page. Iv also been in IT for over 25 years working for IBM, working at multiple plants that they have contracts with in Nebraska and Kansas. i also oversee a large group of techs as well in my position, and own and operate a computer store chain with certified techs, and i don’t know one tech who thinks its a good idea to use a registry cleaner product of any kind.

In fact, we see numerous complaints and issues from people who used specifically uniblue and others like it. Frankly im shocked that anyone who has been “in IT for over 20 years”  would use a product like this, much less use it weekly. Im not trying to come across as insulting, but i showed the comments on the review page, including yours to some other veteran techs, and we were simply dumbfounded by your defense and admission that you use products like this. Again, no offense, but it wouldn’t change anything if you were the Pope with a MS certification, from what we`ve seen since the surface of registry cleaners on the market years ago, its clear that running any registry cleaner is very risky, for not a lot if any benefit.

Now im not looking for a reply, this is a subject that simply can not be debated with truly educated people who have seen a massive amount, and a wide range of systems and configurations negatively effected by software such as this, again with no real benefit to justify the risk. And it is a risk to the novice, whom by the way are usually who use a product such as this, who do not understand the concept of registry backup before hand like you and I.

Sincerely,
[name supplied]

The efficacy of registry cleaners has been debated ad nauseam for years, and even experts inside and outside of Microsoft can’t agree.

The writer of the above comment says he’s not looking for a reply, but in my opinion there is some content there that is misleading. So the problem I faced was to either not approve his blog comment for publication, or to approve it and respond. I feel the writer is genuinely expressing his personal beliefs and concerns, so they are as deserving of airing as anyone else’s. But in that case I need to reply because I think there’s been a lot left unsaid — by both of us. But the moment I started to frame a response I realized it was going to have to be article size, not blog-comment-response size, hence this new article.

What is an expert?

Firstly, let me make it perfectly clear to any reader who may not know better that there is no such thing as a “computer expert”. Computing and information technology is such a vast topic that no human being can possibly have comprehensive command of even a significant part of it.

The closest we can get to expert status is to have competence in one or a small number of sub-fields.

Now that may seem self-evident, but the point I want to make is that, while acknowledging that there is some overlap, it’s important to be aware that hardware technicians (the people who fix physical problems with computer hardware) generally possess very different knowledge and skills to the IT consultant who specializes in software applications and networks. Both have their place, and as I said, there is a little overlap.

My point is that the above comment makes several references to “techs”, but without further elaboration we have no idea what he means by that title. Reading between the lines I rather suspect that most of the people he is referring to are hardware technicians. Similarly, reference to an “MS certification” doesn’t have much relevance unless you know what the certification is. Microsoft has a whole swath of certifications across every area of their very wide-ranging interests.

Approach with caution & obey the rules

In the past I have described the registry cleaner as an “intrusive” utility and have always advocated caution in the form of rebooting before and after installation, and rebooting before and after running a registry scan. People who ignore these safeguards are, sooner or later, doomed to pay for their haste. A typical scenario that has a high chance of ending in trouble is to install new software without rebooting before and after, keep the same session running for hours or even days, then run a registry clean.

Possibly the reason that I never hear complaints or problem reports from clients and others to whom I have recommended a product like RegistryBooster, is that they follow my instructions to the letter and heed my suggestions and warnings. If you’re going to pick the eyes out of a tutorial, if you’re going to follow some of it and ignore the rest, then on your head be it. That sort of casual attitude will get you into trouble with a lot more things than registry cleaners.

The arguments for and against the use of a registry cleaner are myriad and have been batted back and forth between protagonists for many years. Many, such as the writer of the above comment, are adamant that registry cleaners are evil. Others, myself included, believe that a registry cleaner of proven quality is a valuable addition to the computer user’s toolbox.

My toolbox

RegistryBooster is one of a number of software tools that I use on a regular basis to keep my in-house systems running smoothly. And believe me, I’m not one of those IT people who disposes of hardware the moment it loses its new equipment shine. I have systems still in use that were purchased when Windows NT was a pup, and I’m using a wide range of operating systems from NT on up to the present.

Here’s some information I don’t usually make public:

I actually run two registry cleaners on my own systems, one after the other with a reboot in between. Number one is Uniblue’s RegistryBooster. The second is not well known but one that I have found to be just as reliable and trouble-free as RegistryBooster. However, I never recommend it or even mention its name, because support is not only poor, it is literally non-existent. And I won’t recommend any company that won’t adequately support its products, no matter how good they may be.

The practice of using multiple registry cleaners is not new or uncommon. By their very nature different registry cleaners will invariably come up with different results. To understand why that’s so we need to ask the question…

What is a registry error?

I often see people comparing different registry cleaners by the number of “errors” that each detects. Admittedly some cleaners are more aggressive than others, but most often the difference lies in just what the developer considers to be an “error” worth counting?

Registry errors can range from critical/crash-causing to minor and of little or no consequence. Often minor errors in the Registry will be cleaned up by Windows’ own internal housekeeping, without any assistance from an external third-party application.

Some registry cleaners will intentionally ignore (not count) the likes of those very minor anomalies that would be taken care of by Windows’ internal housekeeping. That’s an honest and conservative approach.

Other developers go out of their way to detect and report every minor anomaly so as to make their application look “more thorough” than the opposition, while in reality a lot of what they report is irrelevant.

Where does the fault really lie?

There is also the infrequently-acknowledged situation of registry cleaners being blamed for problems they didn’t create. In this article I gave one such example, where running a registry cleaner resulted in problems with WebRoot SpySweeper. I reported the problem to WebRoot, they investigated, and acknowledge the problem lay with SpySweeper and not RegistryBooster. Yet I’ll wager that the response of practically everybody who encountered this situation would have been “#@%$%^ registry cleaner”, and the more militant would then scurry off to bad-mouth the registry cleaner anywhere they could get a comment published.

Locating trustworthy opinions

Run a Google search for “registry cleaner review” and you’ll be presented with something like a couple of million results. The number is overwhelming and there is the added problem of not knowing who the author is, his/her level of expertise or his/her motivation.

If you’re going to be guided by reviews (and why not?) you need to try to winnow out those that are more likely to be reliable. There are exceptions of course, but articles published by the major magazines (online and off) are usually written by competent people. In fact many IT journalists either are or were IT professionals themselves. Try a Google search for “RegistryBooster review” and you’ll be hard pressed to find a negative review, thus illustrating that there are at least as many “experts” in favour of registry cleaners as there are against.

Then there is the other category of professional who seems to have the attitude that “it’s OK for me but not for you”. It’s not an unusual attitude and, in the absence of specific guidance, not an unreasonable one.

But personally I’m more inclined to provide people with useful tools and the guidance in using them properly.

For example…

In the commenter’s final paragraph he says: “… who do not understand the concept of registry backup before hand like you and I”.

In response I’m forced to point out that I didn’t leave any doubt as to the importance and necessity of performing a backup prior to running a registry cleaner session. There is no “concept” to understand. All reputable registry cleaners offer to perform a pre-scan backup. Accept it! Nothing more to be said.

RegistryBooster, like all good tools of its type, defaults to prompting for a pre-scan backup, and you have to take a physical action to deny it!

If you don’t want to completely trust the registry cleaner software to do the backup for you, another of my articles (which is available to members) provides a step-by-step explanation of how to back up the registry manually. It’s a simple process, simply explained. (See what I mean about not being able to put everything relevant in every article?)

A genuine “Expert Opinion”

Well I think I’ve made my own position and beliefs quite clear, but let’s forget about me for the moment. I’ll defer to someone who’s widely acknowledged expertise makes him rather difficult to argue with.

For those readers who are not familiar with the name, Mark Russinovich has been one of the world’s most respected experts on the Windows architecture for well over a decade. In 2006 Microsoft bought his companies Sysinternals and Winternals, and then subsequently appointed him as a Technical Fellow in their Platform and Services Division.

In a blog article of his own Mark Russinovich publicly supported the use of Registry Cleaners with this statement:

“So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin’s tool chest, at least until we’re all running .NET applications that store their per-user settings in XML files – and then of course we’ll need XML cleaners”.

Is it unreasonable to assert that such a claim from someone of Russinovich’s undoubted knowledge, expertise and standing carries a lot of weight?

And then there’s…

The Microsoft position

Microsoft themselves first got into the registry cleaning business with an elementary product called Regclean. It was unofficial and unsupported and originally created specifically for Windows 9x. After several sporadic attempts to revive it the product disappeared, apparently because its basic design wasn’t up to the task of handling the changing registry architectures of subsequent operating systems.

However Microsoft’s association with registry cleaning didn’t end there.

Although Registry Defragging and Registry Cleaning are slightly different, there is enough of an association to warrant mention of the fact that Microsoft’s PageDefrag utility is still available for download from their site. PageDefrag was originally developed by a Russinovich company, and by making it available for download on their own website it’s reasonable to assume that Microsoft is implicitly giving their blessing to Registry Defragging. And also…

Microsoft’s Windows Live OneCare includes a registry cleaner to (in their words) “help remove invalid or obsolete registry items on your computer”. More details here.

The Windows Registry is, after all, a Microsoft “invention”, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to therefore assume that the concept of registry cleaning is acceptable. That doesn’t mean to say you you should just charge full steam ahead. Concept is one thing, but actual practice can introduce complications. The wrong registry cleaner can certainly get you into trouble, but doesn’t that apply to anything? I’ve made no secret of what I think is the best registry cleaner on the market. You’ll find plenty of other opinions, so take it or leave it.

The Bottom Line

I’ll say again: A reputable registry cleaner is a very useful tool when properly used for the right reasons.

Too many people approach registry cleaners for the first time with the ridiculous belief that it’s a magical bit of  software that’s going to fix all problems and straighten out the mess they have allowed their computers to get into through months/years of neglect. The only thing that can do that is a good human IT consultant, and done properly it will likely be a rather long and somewhat expensive job.

I suspect that the hyped-up advertising concocted by publishers of registry cleaning software is at least partly to blame for these unreasonable expectations. As I have said in the past, a registry clean will hardly have your computer “running like new again” after months/years of misuse and neglect. If running a registry cleaner results in a performance boost, consider that a bonus — but its main aim is correction of certain registry-based problems and improvements in reliability. Developers of registry cleaners should make that clear, but too often they allow their copywriters to hype the speed improvement aspect, which may or may not eventuate.

Some people will find that running a registry cleaner will bring out into the open problems that were already in existence but not in evidence before the registry cleaner did its job. Many of those people will blame the registry cleaner for “creating a problem”. But whatever reaction you choose to go with, you have basically two options: you can either attack the real root cause of the problem, or you can cover it up again by restoring your pre-scan backup.

Finally, I don’t expect this article to convert anyone who already has a contrary opinion. All I can do is present the facts as I see them, offer supporting testimony, and hope that the less experienced readers will attempt to avoid forming overly dogmatic viewpoints of their own — on any topic. Keep an open mind, be receptive to sensible arguments and new ideas, follow instructions closely and use whatever works for you.

For me and many others RegistryBooster does a damn fine job of keeping our computers running clean and fast.