What Are Registry Cleaners?
A registry cleaner is a type of software utility designed for the Microsoft Windows operating system whose aim is to get rid of excess or unwanted items from the Windows registry. However the necessity and usefulness of registry cleaners is a disputed matter, with experts not agreeing on their benefit. The problem is further obscured by the fact that malware and scareware is frequently being connected with utilities of this type.
Registry Cleaners are software utility programs that seek to remove configuration data from the Windows Registry that is no longer used or that is undesirable on the system. Such data may include information left behind by software that hasn't been uninstalled totally from the computer, information that's no longer of use, or settings needed for the operation of malware. Some people believe that these excess items may interfere with performance. A registry cleaner scans the registry, and tries to distinguish the unneeded values in order to erase or repair them.
How They Improve Your Computer's Performance
Registry cleaners, or registry cleanup software, claim that they can improve the performance of computers by freeing the registry of excess data. Due to the sheer size and complexity of the registry database, manually picking out junk and invalid entries would be impossible, so registry cleaners are in essence tools that automate the process.
The correction of an invalid registry key can offer several benefits. For instance, on older versions of Windows, a registry entry suggesting a program should be run at startup from a network path that no longer exists can delay startup by as long as the network protocol needs to timeout. Some registry cleaners provide backup and restore routines that permit the user to revert changes made by the registry cleaner in the event that they are unwanted. A registry cleaner may be of value for someone that adds or removes programs from their computer very frequently, however a virtual machine is a faster and more dependable means of reverting an operating system to a former good known state in a testing scenario.
Some Cautions About Using Registry Cleaners
Google "Registry Cleaners" and, once past all of the software sales pitches, you will come to the articles, blogs, and forums with the warnings about registry cleaners. There are some things to be cautious about. Some registry cleaners make no distinction as to the severity of the errors, and some that do might mistakenly categorize errors as "critical" with little foundation to support it. Most notably, critics state there is no true means for a 3rd party program to know whether any specific key is invalid, redundant or neither. Badly designed registry cleaners might not know for certain whether a key is still being utilized by Windows or what damaging effects getting rid of it may have. This has led to cases of registry cleaners causing loss of functionality and/or system imbalance.
The benefits of Registry cleaners have been employed by a number of trojan applications to install malware, commonly through social engineering assaults that use website popups. Rogue registry cleaner "WinFixer" has been rated as one of the most prevalent pieces of malware presently in circulation. Rogue registry cleaners are frequently marketed with alarmist ads that falsely claim to have pre-analyzed your PC, showing bogus warnings to take "corrective" action, therefore the reason that they are sometimes called "scareware".
n October 2008, Microsoft and the Washington attorney general filed a lawsuit against two Texas firms, Branch Software and Alpha Red, producers of the "Registry Cleaner XP" scareware. The lawsuit alleges that the company directed continuous pop-ups resembling system warnings to consumers' personal computers saying "CRITICAL ERROR MESSAGE! - REGISTRY DAMAGED AND CORRUPTED", before instructing users to visit a web site to download Registry Cleaner XP at a cost of $39.95.
The Limits Of What Registry Cleaners Can Do
Registry cleaners are not specialized malware removal utilities, and hence are not armed to address complicated scenarios where malware such as spyware, adware and viruses can re-infect a computer through multiple infection vectors, where removal leads to system instability or infection of the tool itself.
More importantly, however, the difference in speed attributable the use of a registry cleaner is minimal: seldom do they get rid of more than a few kilobytes from the total size of the registry. The Registry is an enormous database and all this “Cleaning” really does not add up to very much… and it's even been equated to “sweeping out one parking space in a parking lot the size of Montana”.
In fact, technology journalist Ed Bott has claimed that no-one has ever successfully managed to measure any significant performance increase from the use of a registry cleaner. The problem with measuring what a registry cleaner does is that the outcomes are not easily repeatable. Every machine is going to hold a different set of junk in its registry, so comparing results from one system to another won't always make sense. A safer and more measurable approach to Registry performance is to defragment the Registry files utilizing a Microsoft-supported tool such as PageDefrag.
Of course, there are still believers and there is no doubt that registry cleaners can help systems that are just paralyzed with years of "junk" so it's not to say that they are useless. Some have complained that registry cleaning software made their system crash completely. This is always a danger with any software, but when you're messing around with the registry, you can far more easily break something. Remember to back up the registry before running a scanner, and tread lightly. If you are not comfortable restoring a registry file by operating in safe mode and using regedit, you may wish to get help before scanning.
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