Do NOT use Registry Cleaners in 2023

20 thoughts on “Do NOT use Registry Cleaners in 2023”

• "its deviating from what is it meant to be". like your debloater??.. lol

• you have a fresh install of a virtual machine and make fun of how you can only imagine what'd happen if you ran these registry cleaners, yet you dont use them on sth as inconsequential as a virtual machine.
  what are you, a microsoft shill? show us what would happen!
  i bet literally nothing of value would be lost

• In the 2000s I was using tune up utilities when it was not part of avast, then I switched to Ccleaner and since then I have never had a single issue when cleaning the registry. I only run it on personal computers never on servers as I'm scared it will break them. But maybe I will stop using it I was not aware of this.

• But i don't want my windows 'as it was meant to be'' in 2023

• what about the glary utilities

• Off topic since you mentioned FFXI, back in the day, I was wondering why I couldn't play FFXI on a thumbdrive that I carried around so I can play the game on other people's PC, it was because of all the registry that's on the C drive. WoW on the other hand did not embedded registry in the C drive and could be played on a thumbdrive.

• Any real world examples of what specific issues registry cleaner can cause? Apps crashing? Windows blue screening? Driver errors? Slow frame rates? Increased chance of ransomware?

  I've kept on using CCleaner to this day on multiple win 10 and 11 machines just for the hell of it. I haven't really noticed any issues. But if I do have an issue how would I know if it has anything to do with registry cleaners?

• >^.^< FFXI <3

• They work though, everything runs super crisp, sharp and responsively after i run AVG cleanup and CCleaner after, (i bought avg internet security with the cleaner) and as a 25 year pc user, i jknow the power of defragmentation and registry cleaning and it still matter 100%. However if there are cons then so be it lol.

• Been using Avast for a few years now. Trying to get rid of them. It tells me I'm 100% clean, but then it also tells me that there are still some files to be cleaned?? Also, I may be wrong – my imagination – when I've said "no" to the yearly resubsciption, my computer really slows down. They wouldn't do that, would they? Lol. I was looking at using Glary, but after listening to you, maybe I will just skip cleaners altogether. I can mostly clean temp files and such myself?

• I’m assuming revo uninstaller is one of these?

• There is plenty still left behind unfortunately all Uninstallers don't get everything.
  Even on the fresh copy you placed, is that with updates installed?
  Good chance, it's old updates that wasn't removed.
  Good on you anyway for putting it out there, some people don't know how to wipe or fix issues and you may save them.

• Interesting! I've been using reg cleaners for so long, I never thought even about them in a modern context. I used CCleaner until they were bought out by spammy Avast, then switched to Glary Utilities and it's been working great for me for years. In fact, I just used it a few weeks ago. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've had zero problems after doing fairly regular reg cleans. It makes sense to leave the registry alone now, I guess. But it does make me wonder why the registry is messed up to begin with, especially with stock Win11? After all, all a reg cleaner does is try to reconcile entries with actual files. If it can't find one, it flags it. Maybe some apps have legitimate reasons for adding empty entries to the registry? (I can't think of why, though.)
  I think back in the day, when computers were way less faster than they are today, registry bloat was something to be more concerned about. But nowadays, reading the registry – even a bloated one – is trivial for PCs and has little discernible impact on speed (unless it's massively bloated).

• I'm a very very leery techy nerd, so I watch things VERY closely. I never trust any software until I have thoroughly used a progam.

  I've use ccleaner about 10 yrs now, and I have had 0 issues with anything it offers as of yet. I always checked the list, and still do to a point, but have trusted it completely. I use it when I add/remove mainly, it finds empty registry entries left over by bad programmers who can't seem to get things right and clear out the garbage left behind when uninstalling games or apps.

  registry

  We all know windows is NOT without blame, after all if you recall, they released a patch that was deleting folders and files from windows that was unneeded and could not be fixed or reversed and people lost files they had saved hence they pulled that patch, so we can't say windows is all knowing or perfect by any means, and we also know that people have made programs for windows that work better than native windows programs, so I wouldn't be so quick to judge ccleaner and say its not worth using, that's where I'll have to disagree.

  As with everything use with caution, and yes this includes windows.

  I have used ccleaner and still have had no issues even to this day

• Install fresh brand new windows any version……. take a snapshot or back up your registry how ever is your favorite way to do it.
  Now install what you want as you use it. I have noticed comparing a 5 year old heavil yused system has so many no pointers in the registry
  that yes you do need to use them. Something gets corrupt…… yes the purists will just say use restore or reinstall windows from scratch.

  But often times you have software that is so old it is no longer made and the installer goes missing so your only bet is to copy the OS if the time is right to a new hard drive or use something like norton ghost but that is just for that pc model.

  There are times to use it and times not to use it. in a perfect world yes do not use it.
  The worst part of the registry is track everything you do even if you move a folder on the desktop from bottom left to upper right location.

  In the old days I would prefer to totally clean the pc of all the useless registry builds up over time.
  Been in this microsoft world since DOS 4.x So do not ever think you can talk down to me with your less than 15 years experience with Windows. I do not care how my certs you have under your belt. Professional and personal experience using registry cleaners has mostly been positives and yes a few times cleaning the registry has destroyed the system thus needing a reinstall of the OS.
  It is life experience vs no experience using them over the years that has taught me many things.

  I still laugh at those who say to never defrag a NVME drive.

• Never do this. Registry "bloat" is not a thing. If you're that concerned about it, configure your system in a way so you expect to reinstall windows on a regular basis as part of your workflow. Someone OCD about their registry should go check the Windows Firewall advanced settings and sort the rules by group. All of the blank ones (at least on win 10) were added by some software. Clean those up. Then go to device manager and enable "show hidden devices". Now go through and delete all the grayed out ones since those are not connected anymore. This is where every flash drive you've ever connected has its "registry bloat". This is also where the "orphaned" entries go when you simply connect your USB keyboard to a different port, it will make a separate entry here that you can delete.

  At what point is it too much time to keep up with all of this and more? If it bothers you, then partition your user and program data to another volume and get comfortable with symbolic links. And troubleshooting. Or maybe come up with a state or container management hypervisor for windows that works like an immutable linux or nixOS distro.

  I've often thought to have something that runs each program in a sandbox that shares the main storage so that all of its disk writes are tracked and can be rolled back. Like the entire OS should work like a git repo or similar with the ability to branch.

  Well if you can get that to work with windows running on the bare metal and market it to desktop users with OCD, then you'd have some money. It's my idea, though.

• It means we do need to care about or clean Registries in Win10/11 ?

• I remember using registry cleaner software on windows XP and at some point it killed explorer. So I found myself with an unusable OS, I had only a wallpaper showing up, impossible to do anything else 😅.

• Yeah, well how about addressing the reasons for using a reg cleaner such as crap that's been bundled into the system like Adobe or McAfee stuff and when deleted leave a bunch of digital cholesterol in the Registry AFTER you delete them?

• 👍

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