1.

Solve : Are the many programs that claim to repair my registery for real??

Answer» <html><body><p>Hello. I am running Vista on my home assembled desktop that has served me pretty well for over five years.<br/>I get several messages weekly from people wanting to sell me software supposed to repair my registery. I have seen some that scans my computer and then display a whole host of problems they have discovered. They most often ask me to register my system (or something similar).<br/><br/>I'm suspicious of these attemps but I can't say I really understand what's involved technically.<br/><br/>I would be interested in hearing opinions from those 'in the know'.<br/><br/>Thanks all for a great site.<br/><br/>Ivan CopasRegistry utilities CAUSE problems, they don't "cure" anything. There is nothing in the registry that needs to be repaired. The "best" registry utilities are benign and do absolutely nothing. The worst of them will <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/leave-1070813" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about LEAVE">LEAVE</a> your system unusable.I was told, quite aggressively, by a young colleague who believes he knows everything about computers, that the Windows registry gets "fragmented" and this can slow down a PC. I ventured to disagree, which quite annoyed him, but I stood my ground. Part of his problem is he thinks nobody over 50 understands modern technology. When he went to lunch somebody else told me this guy has only ever owned Apple computers and phones and has never run a Windows computer of his own. (He also knows all about Android)<br/><br/>Like Allan said, the registry can look after itself. <br/> Quote from: copas on August 21, 2014, 10:24:49 AM</p><blockquote>I get several messages weekly from people wanting to sell me software supposed to repair my registery. I have seen some that scans my computer and then display a whole host of problems they have discovered. They most often ask me to register my system (or something similar).<br/></blockquote> You are right to be suspicious.  Those things you are seeing are just adverts on websites, it is impossible for them to actually check your computer, they are purely showing an <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/image-11684" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about IMAGE">IMAGE</a> in an attempt to scare/trick you into installing their software.  The same goes for any messages you see on websites saying things about problems with your computer.<br/><br/>While it is true that over time, old registry keys get left around by badly written programs.etc - They do not cause an issue.<br/>What these "registry cleaner" programs claim is that having these stray entries slows everything down.  If the registry was just one big long list that the computer had to search through then yes, having to check over these stray entries would slow it down.  However, the registry is not a big long list, it is a much fancier tree-like structure.  When Windows tries to access a portion of the registry it does not have to check through everything therefore even if there is a couple of stray keys that it does have to check, the speed difference would be so tiny that it is effectively nonexistant.<br/><br/>What I find funny is that these programs are basically saying "We know more than Microsoft does about Windows" - If registry errors were such an issue, surely Microsoft would have included software with Windows to deal with them, much like they do with Disk Defragmenter and Disk Cleanup.<br/><br/>In short, all registry cleaner software is junk, don't bother with it.Ditto...I also <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/agree-1732116" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about AGREE">AGREE</a> that they are all junk. The last one I used was a <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/symantec-657944" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about SYMANTEC">SYMANTEC</a> Norton System Works 2003 and that software surprisingly was very troublesome when using system corrective registry tools.<br/><br/>I learned that when the registry gets hosed that its best to just backup data to an external hard drive and then rebuild the system clean. Even easier is if you create an system image from a clean build and then can simply restore your system <a href="https://interviewquestions.tuteehub.com/tag/back-389278" style="font-weight:bold;" target="_blank" title="Click to know more about BACK">BACK</a> to the clean build state. So I was using Norton Ghost 2003 for quite some time to burn DVD's of a clean build and whenever the system was showing signs that its time for a rebuild I was able to copy my important data to an external and then wipe the hard drive and install the clean image to the system and copy my data back and it felt like a new system again.<br/><br/>One other utility that I use to use a while back was called GoBack <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBack">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoBack</a> , but as soon as Microsoft started adding the restore point feature to its operating systems, I soon found myself no longer using this software. This software I mainly used on test systems when testing out free software which sometimes had dirty uninstallers or were bundled with surprises, and it allowed me to restore my Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Pro systems back to clean state before the software or problem was added, and was nicer than having to perform a full rebuild.<br/><br/>These days if you want to refresh a system back to a clean healthy state your best options are a system restore point if enabled and available, installation of a clean image overtop of the old data on the hard drive, or a clean build after wiping the drive clean. * Just be sure to backup all data to an external before taking any actions so you dont lose data. Also be sure to install an up to date antivirus and perform a full scan of the external drive or media that the data was backed up on, so you do not reintroduce the problem back if its a viral problem.We had a clerk at one of our customer sites run some kind of Aggressive Registry Cleaner. It completely destroyed our software registry information and made all of our software break and not recognize what other components were installed.<br/><br/>Three guesses who got blamed!Many thanks to all who replied!<br/>Your comments, which were unamous confirmed my suspicions.<br/><br/>Thanks again,<br/>Ivan</body></html>


Discussion

No Comment Found

Related InterviewSolutions