Registry scanner

[MowglieNFLD]

what are some good, free registry scanners, spyware scanners that are windows 7 compatible. also what other performance enhancing freeware is available. I dont really feel like trusting random google results even though i have Avast. My comps a christmas '09 HP. thanks a lot.

[Broni]

My comps a christmas '09

Whatever you do, if you want to keep it in a good shape until this year Christmas and beyond, don't use any registry tools. Here is why: http://miekiemoes.blogspot.com/2008/02/registry-cleaners-and-system-tweaking_13.html

[2x3i5x]

for spyware and malware scanners, use malwarebytes' antimalware, superantispyware OR A-Squared free.

[lostcoast]

 Hello,

As far as a registry cleaner I have found that http://www.regsofts.com/
has performed very well and I have yet to see a negative issue with it.
In fact it has solved numerous issues with pc's I have used it on and the others I have recommended.

Please follow this link to make sure you are clean of virus and malware.
 http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,46313.0.html
 follow instructions and post in the forum the results and wait for a reply.

[Broni]

This is as simple, as this...
"Clean" registry doesn't bring any visible gain to computer behavior, but it may easily bring serious damage to the computer.
So, use those cleaners, as much, as you want, but don't come back here crying, that your computer doesn't boot anymore.
Amen.

[lostcoast]

This is as simple, as this...
"Clean" registry doesn't bring any visible gain to computer behavior, but it may easily bring serious damage to the computer.
So, use those cleaners, as much, as you want, but don't come back here crying, that your computer doesn't boot anymore.
Amen.

Why sure it does, its real easy to see why if you think about it. I have seen great results from the use of this product as well as cleaning up registries with hijackthis and getting great results.

Why would you use scare tactics and then tell a nice guest not to come back if they wanted to.

shame shame

Amen suits your Godlike attitude 

[Broni]

I've seen too many messed up computers just by using registry cleaners, so I won't even argue with you.
After all you're "experienced" and I'm only "familiar" 

[Allan]

MowglieNFLD -- Please follow Broni's advice. There is no such thing as a good registry scanner - only some that may not cause as many problems as others. As Broni clearly and correctly stated, "cleaning" a registry serves absolutely, positively no good purpose whatsoever.

Now, if you are having some specific issues with your system please tell us what they are.

Amen suits your Godlike attitude 

lostcoast - Comments like that about one of CH's most respected and knowledgeable contributors will not stand you in good stead on this forum.

[lostcoast]

*TIP* Always be ready for a computer crash by backing up personal files to another hard drive internal/external or online storage. Some infections and corrupt windows issues can cause complete crashes and recovering the files then costs you un-needed time you could spend installing windows as new.


Also if you decide to use a registry cleaner or do any other work on the registry be sure to Back-up the Registry as a precaution.

Also notice the chat link in the bottom of my post if you need live assistance.

[BC_Programmer]

Why sure it does, its real easy to see why if you think about it. I have seen great results from the use of this product as well as cleaning up registries with hijackthis and getting great results.

It's easy to see why it <doesn't> when you think about it.

The following quote is mostly in reference to the registry cleaning component of ccleaner:

Having a larger registry doesn't slow down access time any more then having a lot of files on a disk. recall the heirarchal ordering. If you have a folder on C: with thousands of files, it's not going to slow down accesses across the drive. In fact, it won't even slow down accesses within that folder.

The registry is a database. Yes. One might gather this from the fact that it's full name is "registration database".

However:

A Larger database does not affect access to records within that database, additionally, I might point out that databases like Jet, Access, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc. are relational databases- not heirarchal. Strictly speaking there is one "flat" set of tables containing records; heirarchy is hacked in via lookup Ids into other tables.


http://www.sentinelchicken.com/research/registry_format/

The registration database, however, is fully hierarchal. Many people make the assumption that accessing a key involves accessing the keys before it in the list- or at least "seeking" past them.

While disk wise this is true, the registry stores key and value record offsets in the parent key's records. The value or key records  of the parent key will need to be enumerated, but considering the fact that even a PC from 1998 could iterate over nearly 100 thousand a second it's not going to contribute to slowdown unless you have that many, and that simply never happens. (I am speaking of values and subkeys of a single key, not the registry as a whole). And even then, I imagine they employ a number of other methods aside from the basic sequential access to each record, such as hash maps.

Access to the leaves (values) of the registration database tree follow the very same rules as accessing the leaves in a Tree structure; the speed is O(n), where n is the number of nodes that need to be passed through. Unless you have a registry key that is nested beneath hundreds of subkeys that simply isn't going to be a problem.

Also, let's not forget the common "argument" "well, somebody made a registry cleaner, so it must do something"

I'm sorry, is this an actual argument or a joke?

As for the various registry "integrity" checks they can perform:

"SharedDLLs" have not been used by the EXE loader since windows 98. In fact the only thing that accesses them in common practice is the installer that writes the value there. Safe to delete, but all you gain is a few extra bytes of disk space.

"Unused file extensions"

This is absolutely meaningless. It's like scanning your drive for empty folders. would you expect deleting empty folders on your drive to speed things up? No. This doesn't speed registry access up either. No speed is  gained from this either even with files with that extension- windows would try to find the section to determine wether it exists anyway.

"ActiveX and Class issues"

This is the only meaningful and productive thing you can check for. The best part is almost nobody knows what it's scanning for. I won't even BOTHER to reiterate the same thing I've spoken of in the dozen other far too long posts on this subject I've made. This is only useful in that it prevents applications from trying to instantiate an object only to find that the DLL or executable that is registered is not found.

"type libraries"

pretty much the same as above.

"Application paths"

This found 10 issues ) on my machine.

But all the files it reported as missing were present. More on that in a moment.

'Help files"

another meaningless key. you save a few bytes, maybe, if it discovers that helpfiles registered here don't exist.

"installer files"

This might be sensible... usually. more on that in a moment as well.

"Obsolete software key"

Again, meaningless. no harm, but no real gain.



And also- a far larger problem.

CCleaner's registry checker thing can actually <corrupt> your registry on Vista and 7.

If you don't run it as admin, you can pretty much guarantee some issues in the future. Consider for a moment that a program requires administrator privileges to access files in the system folders or program files folders.

Now, that's sensible.

However, when CCleaner tries to access a file in program files to check if it exists based on the value of a key (say, in Application paths) It get's  back access denied and assumes it doesn't exist, thus marking the key bad. this happens with <All> the various scans; such as installer scans (which are usually stored in the windows folder).

So if you forget to run it as admin you're deleting keys that  <aren't> obsolete, disassociating files from programs that <DO> exist.... creating problems, where there are none.

another one:

I've always rather enjoyed people saying "I've always used it, it makes my PC faster" or something to that effect (where it is pretty much anything- a registry cleaner, a "tune up" program, etc).

If they have always used it, how do they know it makes their computer faster? They don't, and in all likelihood it doesn't.

Take one of the most invasive "Tune up" type program I've had to deal with. "System mechanic". It's supposed to make your computer faster. That's what they all claim. But somehow I don't see how adding 3 new background processes that consume about half my RAM when added together and decide to "defragment the registry"  at seemingly random intervals (well not random, it appears to purposely choose the most inopportune time "Oh hey, I know I've just sat here for the last three hours as you weren't using the computer, but I decided to wait until you tried to play quake to monopolize the CPU".

I swear they do it on purpose. because the types of people who buy these programs never suspect the program. Oh no- it must be a virus or something equally malevolent. And some of them may call tech support, where they can be encouraged that the latest version of the program makes your PC run even faster!

Of course, the funny thing is, they are usually wrong. each new version adds another layer of useless features. Have you seen these programs lately? Every single one of them has decided that they deserve their own unique skin. Why? It's a tune up program, not a bloody beauty pageant- at least, it  shouldn't be. Actually, it is.

I would bet money that if I — or anyone, for that matter — was to create a "optimizer" program that did <absolutely nothing> but looked absolutely stunning while doing it (of course, it gives the <impression> of doing things, listing filenames, progress bars, so forth) people would swear on the great possum that it actually works faster then any of the other "tune up" programs on the market.


Generally speaking, any type of program where the majority of commercial offerings have a non-system default skin is a type of program you don't need.

but it makes me wonder why can't someone develop a registry cleaner that really works?

Why can't salesman sell real snake oil?
There's nothing to clean, period. That's why.

I mean sure, you can say "clean registry" but what is a "clean registry"? what is the difference between a clean and a "dirty" registry, and what performance implications would they have? Some might say that a "dirty" registry is (according to most registry cleaners) "unused" registry keys. well, First off, there is no freaking way a program can ever determine when a registry key is "unused" it was evidently put there for a reason and could have been accessed hundreds or thousands of times. Second, "dirty" implies that there is useless cruft.

There never is. Every single piece of information in the registry is created by something and every single time it's created for a reason.

There is one, AND ONLY ONE, exception to this rule- if you are constantly creating COM components. For example, throughout development my File library has taken on about 60 different GUIDs, and all of those are still in the registry. They aren't slowing anything down and they aren't affecting any functionality at all, so I just leave them be, but the only registry keys that are <ever> safe to delete are ClassIDs whose associated executable/inProcServer32 file don't exist. And even then, the exceptions are too numerous to count. what if the component is part of a game and it's DESIGNED to run from a CD-ROM? now your registry "cleaner" has introduced a registry "error" because all of a sudden after using the "cleaner" your game doesn't work because the cleaner helpfully decided that the key was "obsolete". As I noted before, it's simply impossible to classify the data in teh registry for the same reasons it's impossible to have a program analyze every single file and determine with absolute certainty wether it can be deleted. Sure, you can make assumptions, but the difference is that making an assumption when your cleaning a disks temp files can hardly have the far-reaching and long-felt consequences that deleting a "unused" CLSID key can. Especially when you consider that many "registry cleaners" actually have a "background" mode. so, you have this registry cleaner running every 12 hours deleting this CLSID key that refers to a file on a CD-ROM disc that isn't always on the drive. So, the user asks around. and, the ubiquitous answer they get is that they have "registry errors" as if there is any such thing. So now, they are scrambling through 10's of hundreds of registry cleaners trying to fix this "registry error" that only exists because they had a registry "cleaner" sitting in the background. And to think, if they had just left the bloody thing alone and let Windows handle the registry and it's details they wouldn't be wasting hours upon hours running absolutely pointless scans finding more and more "errors" which the cleaner programs kindly "correct" and now all of a sudden their office programs options screen is missing tabs and their explorer windows all start out 32 pixels tall, their window captions are three times normal size and their theme has reverted to classic mode. And this is supposed to HELP?

So, you say... why can't they make one that "works". there is. in fact, I just wrote one right now.

Code: [Select]

void main()
{
    return 0;
}

it does absolutely nothing, because that is what's best. As much as people like to claim otherwise, windows was not designed or implemented by morons, these people know what they are doing, the registry is a complicated data structure but the way it was designed means that finding any item in the registry is almost always nearly instantaneous. Whoever had the bright idea that the registry would benefit from a smaller size apparently never got the memo that the registry is and has never been a sequentially accessed data structure. I've seen posts in other forums (of course these were very old posts so I didn't necromance) that claims that registry cleaners reduced registry "bloat" which resulted in a faster machine, which is absolutely, completely ridiculous. aside from the absolutely arbitrary decision of what is and is not "bloat" and the often low acumen of those choosing said definition, the fact is that the size of the registry is absolutely meaningless. you aren't going to gain any performance boost by having a "streamlined" registry simply because the access method is not dependent on the size of data structure. it's a tree. and anybody who understands the computer science behind a tree data structure knows the inherent fact that any and all access with be at most O(n) where n is the number of nodes you must go through. for example, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion would require about 5 "node accesses" to get to. however, internally, windows caches frequently used handles, so even though the key is opened and closed frequently it's usually only opened once every session and closed once a session- because it is accessed constantly. <THAT> is how you speed up the registry, just as you do to any data structure. by making algorithm and design improvements to how the ata is accessed and stored, not making arbitrary decisions on what data to delete because of some half-baked notion that less data=faster access.

Actually, I'll be willing to bet, a high percentage, if not the majority of average computer users don't even know the registry exists.

Of course not! That's what makes it so easy to use against them! since the user's don't know what it is, commercials and ads for said "cleaners" can make any false claims they please, like some I've seen where the "registry is windows brain " (complete nonsense) or "the registry stores all your personal data, and if there's an error it's all gone" (wrong on many levels) and my personal favourite "unlike the Linux registry, the windows registry get's corrupted over time" which redefines the term "fail". The people who create these ads don't believe this stuff themselves and they aren't working to help clear the world of registry corruption or anything noble minded like that. All they are looking for is yet another way to part people with their money and put that money in their pocket. They do this using the age old "omg you haz errors, wanna fix YOU BUY YOU BUY!" method.

But... you say- that doesn't explain the number of free "cleaners" that are available. of course not. the explanation is simple. the people writing those cleaners are completely misguided. they themselves have fallen into the same trap that the victims of the "snake oil" cleaners have. that somehow registry cleaning is both possible an worth the effort, so they've made it their solemn duty to create a free registry cleaner. This is great, because now you can corrupt your explorer settings and break all sorts of COM components when you have them on removable media without even paying for a product.

The entire "registry cleaner" thing is also spawned by the vast number of people looking for problems where there are none. these people should get a more suitable hobby, like detective work. No, that magenta pixel you saw in that movie you downloaded does not mean you need to download driver agent, scan for new drivers and them run three registry cleaning programs at the same time in some sort of vain attempt to fix a problem that never existed in the first place and with the unintended result of causing 5 new ones, none of which the user will be made aware of until much later when some truly legitimate program crashes because some well-meaning registry cleaner has decided that the three keys that define that programs OLE registry are obsolete.

End BC registry rant #.. what is it now? 5?

Just because the registry has a lot of keys/values that are not used and/or are forgotten does not constitute a "dirty" registry. In fact, I contend that since the registry cannot actually be made "dirty" it's also impossible to define exactly what "cleaning" the registry is, and this particular opinion is backed up by the fact that even those companies/individuals that create registry cleaners don't even come close to agreeing. one might find double, or three times the number of "obsolete" entries in the registry.

I've already covered this, in a lot of posts- but aside from the fact that defining a "Dirty" is impossible to reason out, it's equally impossible to determine programmatically.

First off, many people would contend that unused sections/keys in the registry are not used. This seems sensible.

However- how does a registry cleaner decide what is, and is not used? How does it "know" what registry keys are actually being used by applications and which ones aren't?

And of course there are the ones that go completely overboard and try to determine what registry keys are "invalid" this is an equally futile endeavour. Other applications store this data. Only the other applications know what it's for.

A lot of cleaners "recognize" when a REG_SZ value is a filename.

A lot of these cleaners determine that if that file does not actually exist, then the key is invalid.

However, what if the application uses that setting to determine where to <Create> a file or folder? Did the cleaner not just screw up that application? what happens when it starts up? Who knows! It might even crash! IF registry "dirt" like that caused crashes, you would think that "cleaning" the registry would do the opposite, but it doesn't always work that way.


I contend that the only Hive that can get "dirty" is the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT key, (which is really just an alias for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\clsid key). why?

it's format is well defined- but! here's the kicker!

the format is <Not> documented! each version of windows introduced new values and keys within the classes key that changed or even made current "cleaning" tools redundant. The only actual cleaner would be a simple loop through all the keys. if that key has a DLL file reference that exists then it's valid. if not, delete it. This is especially the case when converting the defined progID to a CLSID does not actually reflect the CLSID of the component.

That's it. you cannot "clean" any of the other hives, merely because you cannot define what a "dirty" registry is any more then you can say wether a file on your file system is unused.

this has been discussed to DEATH in the forum.

the reason they are useless is there is no way to differentiate "bad data" from good data within the registry, which is why a lot of runs of these so called "Cleaners" their internal hueristics might decide that certain data values are invalid- for example, many flag filenames in the registry that don't exist. What if the path points to a disconnected network drive? The cleaner will flag it and delete it, and the next time the app is run it will perform unexpectedly, possibly crashing.


Additionally although verifying the existence of COM server DLL,OCX, and EXE file is a simple directory lookup some configurations might have some of the registered com components on  removable drive. run the cleaner while it's unplugged and it will delete the otherwise perfectly valid entries.

This situation compounds when it tries to verify component categories and CLSID's between the versions of the same component.

It boils down to this- Registry cleaners, regardless of the amount of hueristic data can not foresee how, or what applications store in the registry and thus it is a fools errand to try to define some standard.


This isn't even factoring in the use of the term "corrupt". If a registry is corrupted- windows won't boot. you cannot have a few "corrupted entries" unless specific applications purposely wrote those values to the registry. I've found most "corruption" as flagged by these so called registry cleaners is a REG_BINARY type that an application uses. Of course the proposed fix is the delete the entry, rendering that application unusable.

I've said it once and I'll say it again- the fact that registry cleaners even have a market is simply because of the instilled preconception by users that it holds anything more then mere data. It's a data repository, and nothing more; basically a giant conglomeration of Heirarchal INI files, really.

Why was there never a "INI file cleaner"? the same reason there shouldn't be one now- there is no way to objectively decide wether a foreign program's data is valid or not- but there wasn't- for the sole reason that people understood INI files, Now, there is a cloud of confusion over the registry. I've heard people refer to it as the "brain" of windows, which is like calling a acountants paper his brain- completely false. The reason registry cleaner's exist at all is because people think they are useful, when in fact the only purpose they serve is a placebo to the user who actually believes there is a such thing as a "registry issue". There isn't.


The only reason the registry even exists is thanks to OLE and COM, which used the windows 3.1 registry to save OLE registration information. Later versions removed the registry size limit (to some degree) and improved the node/key heirarchy. The registry's main purpose is to store COM/OLE registration, File association, and other system specific information, and as I said, no program can pass judgement on what another program considers to be valid. So what if a string looks like a filename? Without knowing how the application loading that string uses it the cleaner program has no business flagging it as "corrupt" or "file missing" or anything of the sort.


ONE change- a registry cleaner has only one, very specific use case- the removal of orphaned CLSID entries during the development of a COM component. Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say the average user really doesn't develop COM components. However- this use is PURELY cosmetic- a larger registry instills absolutely no time penalty of any sort, and the symptoms that people often diagnose as a "corrupt registry" or "registry issues" are 100% caused by malware. Warranted, the malware installs itself via registry keys in the Winlogon notify, RUN, and various plugin keys for the shell, but that doesn't make the entries invalid anyway- they are perfectly legal, which is why a spyware app is required to properly remove the entries, since it can flag the DLL's in question as malicious and thusly knows via it's database exactly how to go about removing it.

An entire thread about it here:

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,77609.0.html

what makes a registry issue? a key that isn't referenced by programs? a key with wrong but still valid data?


the registry having an "issue" by any definition will only affect those applications who use the key having the "issue". Most programs ignore invalid values and use defaults, and those defaults overwrite the invalid value when the application saves it's settings, which means that scanning for and fixing these "issues" is merely a waste of time. (and, in the case of paid registry cleaners, a waste of money as well).

[lostcoast]

Yes CCleaner has issues with registry cleaning, BROVO!

Have seen a few in Chat who were sorry to use that product for registry cleaning.


None with the product that I advise.

[2x3i5x]

Yes CCleaner has issues with registry cleaning, BROVO!

Have seen a few in Chat who were sorry to use that product for registry cleaning.


None with the product that I advise.

for every software out there, at least one person will  have had problems with it.

[BC_Programmer]

Yes CCleaner has issues with registry cleaning, BROVO!

Only one quote was specifically directed at ccleaner. and even then, the fact remains: there is no way to programatically determine wether a key is used. The fact that a registry "cleaner" is called by that name implies that the registry can get "dirty" which by definition means that keys can have "dirty" values. Except they cannot.

The one you reccommend is more aggressive then ccleaner. And, even more interesting, I just tested them both in a VM. Your recommended product found "661 Error" First, as I already explained, there is no such thing as a "registry error". it's a pejorative term used to confuse and manipulate users into supporting a niche product whose niche only exists because users let it. Secondly, running ccleaner as well- the results from CCleaner are a subset of those from the "free windows registry repair" product. I find this rather interesting. I tried it on several Virtual machines. every single one, the ccleaner results were all a subset of the "free windows registry repair" results. CCleaner found fewer "issues" (note how it uses a far more legitimate term, even if it is still inaccurate) in HKEY_CLASSES _ROOT, which is the only hive it scans in. However, every item ccleaner found appeared in the "free registry cleaner" (at at some point between the scans it graduated into an error, as well). Therefore, logically, those people who had problems with ccleaner would have had the same problems with "free windows registry repair". And in fact, they likely would have had the same or worse problems with nearly any registry cleaner. (not counting of course those that don't actually do anything, of which there are a few)