[Hansen]

I'm looking for a good (ideally free) program to look at my registry and clean up all the deadends and no longer used stuff that did not remove during uninstalls.. Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[tcusta00]

Formatting the drive always works well for me. Nothing beats a clean install.

 

[Greg Alsobrook]

I use Eusing... http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/registry_cleaner.htm

 

[hdtvfan0001]

Here's one that's not very expensive...and it works...

http://my.smithmicro.com/win/registrycleaner/

 

[wilbur_the_goose]

Here's a freebie that works very well: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/products/computer/safetyscanner.mspx

 

[Stuart Sweet]

System Mechanic's pretty good:

http://www.iolo.com/

 

[dmspen]

jv16 power tools from Macecraft is awesome for a whole pile of stuff.
www.macecraft.com

 

[Hansen]

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I ended up trying the Microsoft Onecare Live cleanup scanner/utility.

Oddly, it found over 10,000 items in the registry that were no longer active and recommended to be removed. The reason I think that odd is because I do not know if that is normal but it seems like a big number to me, and because the computer is only a few weeks old. I decided to run the registry clean up because I had some HP printer software that I was installing that ended up going completely nuts on me (to the point that I have not been able to uninstall the remaining part without creating a bunch of errors) and I noticed when installing and trying to uninstall it looked like it was accessing the registry a whole lot.

Is this a normal number of items to be clean out as no longer used?

 

[HIPAR]

Formatting the drive always works well for me. Nothing beats a clean install.

Only as a final act of desperation; it takes days of work to get Windows reconfigured the way you want it. I'm helpless with the default Windows user interface settings and there is just too much Microsoft sets running that most of us home users just don't need. I've worked these things out after month's (years?) of trial and error and wouldn't want to lose all of that undocumented work with a clean install.

I have never found any noticeable performance increase after a registry cleaning.

--- CHAS

 

[tcusta00]

Only as a final act of desperation; it takes days of work to get Windows reconfigured the way you want it. I'm helpless with the default Windows user interface settings and there is just too much Microsoft sets running that most of us home users just don't need. I've worked these things out after month's (years?) of trial and error and wouldn't want to lose all of that undocumented work with a clean install.

I hear ya... it really can be a PITA and everything never gets back to the way you had it before.

I was half-kidding, but I've found clean installs to be the best remedy if you have real issues that can't be corrected with the types of programs mentioned above.

I have never found any noticeable performance increase after a registry cleaning.

--- CHAS

...as you no doubt have found out.

 

[Tyrnal]

I use a program called ccleaner, free, cleans the registry, cookies, temp files, uninstalls, and many other different things

 

[Draconis]

I use a program called ccleaner, free, cleans the registry, cookies, temp files, uninstalls, and many other different things

Ditto, I have used CCleaner for a long time now. It's the best free disk/registry cleaning utility out there.

http://www.ccleaner.com

 

[Jimmy 440]

I use REGCLEAN & it cleaned up alot of garbage and my pc runs much smoother.

 

[prospect60]

ccleaner for me as well.

Free, flexible, and effective.