Registry maintenance

Personally I wouldn't.

There is no need to do anything in the registry as it is just a glorified database, and any unused entries just sit there, not doing any harm. Certainly with such a new OS as Windows 7 there should be no need for any optimisation or registry cleaning at this early stage, and I would suggest against ever touching the registry.

We see posts and discussions all too often in these forums where systems have failed after the user has used such utilities, and changes have been made to the registry that the OS could not recover from.

My advice, stay away from them and from the registry.

Mark

There's no need. Registry programs tend to create more problems than they solve. At best, they do nothing, at worst they're scams.

Case in point. Name a single registry program that will give you a clear explanation of how it determined which registry keys are good and which are bad. None do that I'm aware of. So, if we don't even have a basic understanding of what the program is doing, how do we know it's doing anything at all?

You go to pretty much any antivirus vendor's website, you'll find a complete listing of every virus their program detects as well as an analysis of the threat posed by the virus. There's usually a breakdown of what it does, and other detailed information like manual removal instructions. None of which you'll find any kind of parallel to with registry programs. To me, that sets off all kinds of alarms that say scam. They are these black box programs which, for all we know, just generate a pretty report after doing absolutely nothing.

Until I see some kind of explanation about the program's selection criteria, on the level that any reputable antivirus vendor will put up, I consider all registry programs to be scams, and the people who use them to be idiots who will get exactly what they deserve in due course.

Well, I must be an idiot. I have been using RegFix for 3 years on 2 diff computers and never had a problem with their operation. I have had several others that did create more problems than they helped. And it's true some of these were just scams products. You and I know that after several years of installing and uninstalling programs and hitting the wrong keys and haveing the cat walk across your key board a couple of times or the little one wants to play on daddys computer while you step into the bathroom a min. Things go wrong in the registry. Your HD is like a 98RPM record only much smaller with 1 million times more info on it. If a '0' or a '1' gets moved into another program --Something has got to give. If you can figure out which programs have been corrupted then you can unistall and reinstall to correct the problem. That take a lot of time in some cases. I wouldn't have the 2 biggest anti-virus companies on my computer if you gave them to me. They are worthless and you pay and pay and still have problems with. I have use AVG free for for over 10 years and never got a virus. Does that mean all Free anti-virus are good? No! Trail and error will give you the best results.
What I don't understand is why Bill Gates never developed a built-in registry fix in his PC's like APPLE. You would think 650Billion in your pocket would do it.

Agree that you probably don't need something in addition to built in utility, but if your not sure try several of the higher rated ones and scan to compare results.The more popularly downloaded utilities all seem to provide details as to the nature of an entry with option to repair. Any entry can be searched if your not sure, simply take your time to learn before using advanced options. Also, most have automatic backup and restore points. Since you have upgraded your OS there could be benefit to using other multifunction software as you can easily clutter things up until you become used to it. Finally, I also agree that some are scams, do your homework and use the ample resouces (reviews, forums, even Wikipedia to check company backgrounds) available.

Thankyou for your thoughtful response to my question.

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Hope this helps.

Grif