Registry Cleaner

Have you tried the free trials of iolo system mechanic? It's pretty much a full version of the software for 30 days or so. I've used it before and it worked great.

Poor Windows users...

Shadow_Ferret said:

That's one of the few things that bothers me, too. Why doesn't Windows come with a tool that cleans out the registry? They have to know that's an issue with their software, right?

Right?

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No, the real question is why doesn't Windows just get rid of that relic that is Registry. It's 2010 running 1990 technology.

Cyia said:

Have you tried the free trials of iolo system mechanic? It's pretty much a full version of the software for 30 days or so. I've used it before and it worked great.

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Just did it myself. Thank you, it's wonderful

Jayzus, I just use CCleaner.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Weird. My wife's laptop, well, if we turned it off, it would not come back on. I literally sat for several hours one day pushing the power button hoping one time it would start, sort of like continually turning the key to your car's ignition, hoping for a different result.

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What did it do? Did it not come on at all, or come on and then shut down?

Shadow_Ferret said:

Well, it did start, finally, and we haven't shut it off or restarted it for several weeks. I ran this registry cleaner and when it was done, it wanted to restart and I was panicky, thinking, OK, now I'll spend the rest of the day trying to get it to come back up. But it came back up right away!

I thought maybe the hard drive was going, or the fact that the battery had no charge to it any longer had something to do with it not starting, but I guess there was something in the registry!

Thanks.

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There's always "something in the registry" - there's I-forget-how-many-ways a program can start up when Windows boots - first it was in autoexec.bat and config.sys, but then they added The Registry which has about a bajillion entries.

I've never run a "registry cleaner" or anything like that, but I've diddled with a few registry things, like turning off the "HP Update" thing, that like so much other crap comes up at some random time on its own. I suppose the GOOD thing about the registry is it's got options where you can turn that crap OFF. Just Google whatever you want to do, there's usually instructions online.

What scares me is running something like that and it fixes something, but I have no clue what it was. I like to KNOW things about my computer, even if thesedays I'm just pretending to know. It's not like the Apple ][ days where you could read the source code of the ROM in the red manual, and disassemble the DOS and have a chance of understanding Woz's code.

maestrowork said:

Poor Windows users...

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Poor modern-ass computer users! Does anyone REALLY know WTF is going on under the hood?

Shadow_Ferret said:

Or that. Yes.

Isn't it all still based on MS-DOS?

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It's not quite THAT bad... MS-DOS ended with the Win95-98-ME thing. NT 3.51 was an actual new OS from Microsoft (even though it had the Windows 3.x interface), and apparently current Windows versions are tracable back to that.

Matera the Mad said:

Jayzus, I just use CCleaner.

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I just use SuperShine[SUP]TM[/SUP] on my Mercedes' finish, then I pour lighter fluid on the hood and light it, just like they do in the infomercial!*


* Do Not Try This At Home. Or Anywhere Else.

benbradley said:

I suppose the GOOD thing about the registry is it's got options where you can turn that crap OFF. Just Google whatever you want to do, there's usually instructions online.

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Shadow Ferret, unless you're really comfortable with editing rege files, make a copy before you do anything to the Registry. Always.

I wouldn't muck with the registry by hand. I screwed up a few times and I'm an IT guy.. Good thing I had backups.

My registry wasn't backed up, and it took 5 hours to drfrag. Thanks for the thread guys, it's running a lot better

ETA: Make that 6

I know what's going on under MY hood.

REGULAR maintenance keeps a lot of shit from happening.