Cleaning registry - could it cause start up to become slower?

[Hansen]

Short story: Can doing a registry clean up cause windows Vista 64 to load slower than before cleanup? I'm not certain and it's likely my mind playing tricks on me, but it seems a tad slower on load up. Not a big deal but curious if my perception might be right. I always thought a clean up quickened things up on loading.

Long story: As indicated in my other thread, I was looking for a program to clean up my registry. I ran Windows Onecare cleaner and it found over 10,000 items to be removed as dead/no longer used. That struck me as odd since the computer was a couple weeks old but I had a bad issue with some HP printer software that was corrupt and went crazy during install and had problems uninstalling. During that install and aborted uninstall I noted tons of messages about writing to registry. So I thought I'd clean up the mess left behind.
As noted above, things seem slower on load up to me. Could it be my mis-perception?

[P Smith]

CHeck Events in System/App logs.
Run defrag also.

[Hansen]

Turns out it was my perception and cleaning my registry did not, for me at least, have a negative impact on startup times. I happened to be at a store that had my same system and I quickly timed the startup and compared to mine when I got home tonight. Mine was a tad (3-4 seconds) faster. It's funny how one's perception can play tricks on you. In any event, issue closed. Although I still wonder why I had over 10,000 items in the registry that were dead ends and needed to be removed. Oh well, a mystery that will remain a mystery.

[HIPAR]

.... Although I still wonder why I had over 10,000 items in the registry that were dead ends and needed to be removed. Oh well, a mystery that will remain a mystery.

Even after a new install, the registry contains a bunch of stuff that's no pertinent to your particular configuration.

--- CHAS

[MIAMI1683]

Short story: Can doing a registry clean up cause windows Vista 64 to load slower than before cleanup? I'm not certain and it's likely my mind playing tricks on me, but it seems a tad slower on load up. Not a big deal but curious if my perception might be right. I always thought a clean up quickened things up on loading.

Long story: As indicated in my other thread, I was looking for a program to clean up my registry. I ran Windows Onecare cleaner and it found over 10,000 items to be removed as dead/no longer used. That struck me as odd since the computer was a couple weeks old but I had a bad issue with some HP printer software that was corrupt and went crazy during install and had problems uninstalling. During that install and aborted uninstall I noted tons of messages about writing to registry. So I thought I'd clean up the mess left behind.
As noted above, things seem slower on load up to me. Could it be my mis-perception?

Ok so I use Vista, which registry cleaner is best for use with it. I had one on XP but I switched PC's. anythoughts would be cool

[P Smith]

See the other thread what OP mentioned above.

[smiddy]

I can't tell anything with my Vista machines, but they seem faster than my XP machines on nearly everything. I tend to leave the registries alone unless I have problems. It does however get cluttered with nonsense. :)