Registry Cleaner for Windows XP???

hearingimpared

Do any of you PC guru's know of a free registry cleaning download for Windows XP?

My PC has slowed down considerably, it takes longer to start programs, load webpages, multi-task, etc. I ran a free registry checker from AVG and as I suspected I have an inordinate amount of registry errors.

I can't afford to buy a registry cleaner/fixer right now.

An added thought, my PC was inundated with the Trojan Horse worm-koobface last week and it took two days to get rid of every trace of it with my AVG & Webroot Spyware programs. I'm sure this added to the registry errors.:mad::mad::mad:

Knowing the importance of the registry I have looked on line and there are dozens of free cleaners. I am hesistant to use any of them without some guidance and recommendation from you PC guys.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

polkatese

Joe, for Registry cleaner, I use HiJack This. It's free (www.hijackthis.com)

And for routine maintenance/cleanup, I use Ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com). it's free too.

Give 'em a try. GL.

bobman1235

Most studies I"ve read on the subject say that "cleaning" your registry has little to no effect on PC performance. Doesn't stop me from doing it regularly though (using ccleaner that polkatese mentioned).

hearingimpared

bobman1235 wrote: »

Most studies I"ve read on the subject say that "cleaning" your registry has little to no effect on PC performance. Doesn't stop me from doing it regularly though (using ccleaner that polkatese mentioned).

Really!?! I thought the registry was the heart and soul of the OS. Hmmmm . . . nevertheless I have over 858 registry errors and that can't be good, right?

BTW thanks guys for the links and the info.:)

unc2701

Do you have your install disc and license #? ...and the same for any software you've got installed? Cheapest, cleanest fix is to back up your files, nuke the harddrive and re-install.

Once you've done that and have a clean install, Ghost/mirror/archive/ whatever that so next time this happens you can just copy back the clean install instead of starting over.


Or get Ubuntu and trade registry errors & viruses for driver issues.

Amherst

Joe, The nuke and reinstall procedure is most likely where you will be heading with this. Start backing up important files and digging up your software disks and licenses.
If you wind up with a reinstall make sure the hard drive is "zeroed" out first, a simple format won't cut it.

bobman1235

hearingimpared wrote: »

Really!?! I thought the registry was the heart and soul of the OS. Hmmmm . . . nevertheless I have over 858 registry errors and that can't be good, right?

BTW thanks guys for the links and the info.:)

Ehhh, it's where the OS gets a lot of information but the way it's accessed, most of the "errors" are just superfluous / wasted things that would just never be looked at anyway, and hence don't slow anything down.

concealer404

Have you de-fragged recently?

Jstas

bobman1235 wrote: »

Ehhh, it's where the OS gets a lot of information but the way it's accessed, most of the "errors" are just superfluous / wasted things that would just never be looked at anyway, and hence don't slow anything down.

That's not really true. I find that many of the "experts" that mention these things have little to no clue about actual system level functions of any OS let alone Windows.

The bad registry entries can slow do the system because everything that generates an error, has, at one point, tried to grab memory to run the process. When it does the memory grab, it leaves less and less memory available for other tasks. The system then starts having to dip in to page file and virtual memory resources.

If you have enough of these bad entries in the registry and they are perpetually tied to processes that cannot run because other systems resources have been locked out from them, they will grab enough memory to bog things down. This causes other programs, even Windows itself, to have to start swapping resources out of virtual memory which is made up of hard disk space. Hard drive access times are about 1/10th the speed of memory access times and the read/write is close to 30 times slower than that. Granted we are talking nanoseconds but the difference is noticeable.

Besides, having dead links in your registry can leave you open for exploits that can cause big problems. It's always a good idea to clean up the registry and keep it clean.


Also, HiJackThis, while an excellent tool and one of my favorites, is not a cleaner as much as it is an inspector. To have HiJackThis clean the registry, you need to select the bad entries manually. To do that, you do need a certain amount of experience and because of that I do not recommend any novice attempt it. HiJackThis is very brutal in it's fixing as well. It will remove stuff most others can't. Very rarely do I have to do a manual edit to the registry. But, because of that, HiJackThis is like the equivalent of a Gatling gun when a sniper rifle would have done just fine. It has it's place and it's a potent weapon in the arsenal available against spyware/adware/malware but it shouldn't be wielded by someone who lacks the experience.

CCleaner is a good tool, very easy to use and automated for the most part. That one, anybody can use.

I've used Spybot for years now and I rarely have problems with it. It is through and therefore rather slow but it does a very good job of cleaning up registry entries as well as malware in all places on file systems. You do have to use care because some viruses can embed themselves in system files and if Spybot deletes of changes the permissions on that file, it can take your system down. But for spyware/adware, Spybot does the best job of exterminating the bugs and cleaning up the mess when it's done.

Lastly, I would not reload the OS over registry issues. Reloading the OS is a last ditch effort when all other issues are irrecoverable or a catastrophic hardware failure has caused data loss. I hate doing it because it does nothing to preserve system integrity and puts the work on the user to recover critical files from any backups. If there are any to begin with. I've always seen it as the lazy way out and makes me wonder why people who offer to "help" even suggest it. It seems that if you didn't have the time or inclination to do more, why did you even bother to help in the first place? I'd rather exhaust every other avenue and preserve the system than to go about the hassle of reinstalling an OS. And I'm not taking pot shots at anyone here. I see that suggestion every time someone asks about computer issues. I used to think that reinstalling the OS was a good solution but ultimately it creates at least twice as much work as just finding and fixing the problem.

Amherst

After an infection and apparently having trouble with removal, then a slow machine, usually the issues are bigger than simple registry manipulation.

Best to be prepared.

bobman1235

Jstas wrote: »

That's not really true. I find that many of the "experts" that mention these things have little to no clue about actual system level functions of any OS let alone Windows.

That may be true, but having low-level knowledge isn't necessary to do real-world comparisons. I'd rather someone actually do the experiment and say "there is no appreciable difference" than someone just say "well, I know there SHOULD be a difference so I assume there is."

unc2701

Jstas wrote: »

Lastly, I would not reload the OS over registry issues. Reloading the OS is a last ditch effort when all other issues are irrecoverable or a catastrophic hardware failure has caused data loss. I hate doing it because it does nothing to preserve system integrity and puts the work on the user to recover critical files from any backups. If there are any to begin with. I've always seen it as the lazy way out and makes me wonder why people who offer to "help" even suggest it. It seems that if you didn't have the time or inclination to do more, why did you even bother to help in the first place? I'd rather exhaust every other avenue and preserve the system than to go about the hassle of reinstalling an OS. And I'm not taking pot shots at anyone here. I see that suggestion every time someone asks about computer issues. I used to think that reinstalling the OS was a good solution but ultimately it creates at least twice as much work as just finding and fixing the problem.

So you're gonna be holding his hand through this whole process and doing the work for him? Yes, we can sit here, and run down every squirrely entry, walk through removing all the spyware and go back and forth for a week. Or he can take 2 hours to back up his files to CD/DVD/thumb (the computer is still running, so not an issue), 2 hours to re-install the OS and he's done. I'm confident that he's capable of doing that whereas mucking with the registry takes some experience.

Yeah, I'm pushing the work onto the end user, 'cause I can guaran-damn-tee neither you nor I are going to actually touch his computer. Give him something you know will work, is simple and doesn't require additional support.

Jstas

bobman1235 wrote: »

That may be true, but having low-level knowledge isn't necessary to do real-world comparisons. I'd rather someone actually do the experiment and say "there is no appreciable difference" than someone just say "well, I know there SHOULD be a difference so I assume there is."

I'm not assuming there is, I know there is. I have watched performance monitors measuring all kinds of stuff from network throughput to RAM usage. I have seen how a broken registry entry can louse things up as a program that wants to run continually starts, hits a locked out resource and fails. Especially if it fails without releasing the memory.

It becomes especially critical when you are running a virtualization server or when you are booting systems across a network with no local drives. I've had entire Virtual Machine servers be brought to their knees because of someone's poor programming or a memory leak that traces back to bad registry entry for a resource that either doesn't exist or has been reallocated on a single VM. If you are booting remotely, every single system call going out over the network eats up bandwidth and if it's timing out or failing it can cause other errors that can affect system performance negatively. I've also seen rogue processes with broken registry entries cause a system halt that produces a stop screen (blue screen of death) that causes system file corruption as it dumps memory like a runway model dumps her lunch.

A clean registry is a healthy registry. Keep it clean because even if it doesn't have a performance gain that is worth it to you, it does help out a great deal when troubleshooting problems.

Jstas

unc2701 wrote: »

Yeah, I'm pushing the work onto the end user, 'cause I can guaran-damn-tee neither you nor I are going to actually touch his computer. Give him something you know will work, is simple and doesn't require additional support.

No, you can't "guaran-damn-tee" anything and you certainly don't speak for me in any respect. If I have to help him out and hold his hand through everything I can and will but it will have to be at times when my schedule permits. Especially since I can't consciously charge a friend for helping him out in his time of need. I won't be doing it here either. I'd likely be talking to him over the phone. I may even drive down to his house. He's only about 45 minutes from me.

unc2701

Jstas wrote: »

No, you can't "guaran-damn-tee" anything and you certainly don't speak for me in any respect. If I have to help him out and hold his hand through everything I can and will but it will have to be at times when my schedule permits. Especially since I can't consciously charge a friend for helping him out in his time of need. I won't be doing it here either. I'd likely be talking to him over the phone. I may even drive down to his house. He's only about 45 minutes from me.

Well, then: I apologize. I didn't know you were that local. Guess we can cut the suggestions, if you've got this one covered.

My bad.

concealer404

Look what you started, Joe.

Amherst

Really great that you have offered your knowledge and help, that's a good friend!

fatchowmein

If you're going to be digging around and looking at memory threads, try process explorer.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

ESavinon

These two free programs should help:

http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Registry-Cleaner/3000-2094_4-10909814.html?tag=mncol

http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10567503.html?tag=mncol

Kex

This sort of thing comes up all the time. I don't know what Joe is running, but one of the laptops I use is an ultra-light laptop with XP, which means the specs. aren't great (it's hard to keep size, weight and profile down and still avoid heat issues, without losing performance). It runs perfectly when it's on, and I absolutely never get random freezes or system failures, so it's very stable, but starting up is horribly slow. I circumvent this issue by simply leaving it in standby all the time, and only turn it off completely about once a month. It starts from standby in a few seconds, but it takes several minutes to start when completely off.

Anyway, just for giggles, I just timed starting up before running CCleaner and then after running CCleaner. Unfortunately, I didn't gain one solitary second in performance, despite removing a reported dozens of "registry errors" and thousands of unused files (including temporary internet files and other stuff). It's nice to tidy up, but it didn't speed anything up by the tiniest fraction.

I should have checked the task manager before and after too, but currently I have 65 processes running (which may actually be a few less than before, but I can't be certain of that), and am using less than half the physical RAM available, or about one quarter of the "commit charge" memory.

I haven't reinstalled the O.S. in over two years but I know from similar experiences with other laptops that if I did I would gain back time during starting up, which would be approximately two to three times as fast as it is now. It would be great if I could find a way to improve that without a new install, but other than Ubuntu (which I tried with great success on a couple of other laptops), I haven't found any other alternative.

Since I'm not noticing slower performance from applications, however, my issue and Joe's problems are probably not related.

sucks2beme

Bottom line, create restore points in case you need to roll back. Make a registry
back up once in a while. Stuff happens, and if you don't have these, say goodbye to your data.

ESavinon

Try defragmenting the registry:

http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-Registry-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10678033.html?tag=mncol

wz2p7j

Go to start - run and type in "msconfig"

Go to the "startup" tab and uncheck EVERYTHING you don't recognize. In fact you can even "disable all" if you want to.

Then restart the computer and see if it runs any faster.

Chris

hearingimpared

Whew . . . I just got back to my PC and I find this! I've been out of computers for quite a few years and while not a novice I am completely stupid when it comes to the registry and such. Backing up my PC and F disking it is not an option although I thank you for the suggestions.

I am simply looking for something like the old "regclean.exe" that Microsoft used to put out years ago to clean up the registry.

The PC is not doggedly slow or giving me any errors. However it has slowed down. I'm not getting any system hangs or lockups or anything of that sort. The virus that attacked my computer really didn't slow it down any more than it already had slowed down.

The problem is I've not done any maintenance on this PC since I bought it. No defrags, no disc cleanup no nothing. A lot of my problems are that I let my wife and kid use it from time to time and they really haven't a clue about using a PC. My desktop is completely filled with BS icons.

I do need what John has suggested, a helping hand . . . thanks for the offer John, I will need your help cause I'm not about to start deleting things errors or not out of the registry.

Please consider me completely computer stupid it won't hurt my ego. I need help to improve the performance of my PC and I know when I'm in over my head.

Thanks guys for your suggestions and help. I didn't want this to become a slugfest.

John, I'll PM you my phone number if you don't already have it and if you can please help me out at your leisure I would appreciate it. This is not an emergency and I can wait as long as needed for you to take time out of your busy schedule to help me out.

Thanks to all.

hearingimpared

Amherst wrote: »

Really great that you have offered your knowledge and help, that's a good friend!

He is and always has been. It's a shame people don't know John well here. He gets a bad rap.

bigaudiofanatic

polkatese wrote: »

Joe, for Registry cleaner, I use HiJack This. It's free (www.hijackthis.com)

And for routine maintenance/cleanup, I use Ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com). it's free too.

Give 'em a try. GL.

X2 for ccleaner but be careful with the hijack this that is mainly for use to disable malware and viruses so you can remove them.

kuntasensei

I was gonna chime in on this one, but Jstas pretty much said it all.

At the shop I used to do work for, we used to just create ghost images of a clean XP install to roll back to when the system eventually bogged down (and XP does over time, even if you're the most tech-savvy user), then use a secondary drive for data. Fortunately, Microsoft's operating systems post-Win2k are far more manageable. When I was running XP, I would FDISK and start over about once a year and it typically only took me an hour or so to get back in business. It's not something I'd wish on anyone who doesn't know what they're doing though.

9 times out of 10, you can fix a slow XP system by going through all the crap that starts up when you boot and eliminating everything you don't need.

hearingimpared

Geez! I wish I was just having a problem with my turntable as I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed by all these suggestions!

Honey, where are my tranquilizers . . .oh okay you can get them for me. . . yeah a half dozen will do!?! Hehehe!:eek::D;):D:rolleyes::D

hearingimpared

wz2p7j wrote: »

Go to start - run and type in "msconfig"

Go to the "startup" tab and uncheck EVERYTHING you don't recognize. In fact you can even "disable all" if you want to.

Then restart the computer and see if it runs any faster.

Chris

kuntasensei wrote: »

I was gonna chime in on this one, but Jstas pretty much said it all.

At the shop I used to do work for, we used to just create ghost images of a clean XP install to roll back to when the system eventually bogged down (and XP does over time, even if you're the most tech-savvy user), then use a secondary drive for data. Fortunately, Microsoft's operating systems post-Win2k are far more manageable. When I was running XP, I would FDISK and start over about once a year and it typically only took me an hour or so to get back in business. It's not something I'd wish on anyone who doesn't know what they're doing though.

9 times out of 10, you can fix a slow XP system by going through all the crap that starts up when you boot and eliminating everything you don't need.

This, I believe is the biggest cause of the slow down. I'm going to give Chris' suggestion a try right now.

FYI, I did go to Hijack site and ran a couple of registry testers that claim also to include a fixer utility. Not so! They allow you to fix a half dozen or so then you have to buy the rest of their program. Then there's the ones that warn you that it is not for novices because you have to make the decision to delete or fix registry issues that you are familiar with. . . um yeah . . . I'm not touching the registry. Over my years managing PC techs and help desk support personel I've seen too many PCs trashed by people who think they know what they are doing in the registry and completely effed up the PC. Thanks God some of them Ghosted the hard drive to another HD and completely back up the data before hand, all of which were noted in the trouble shooting and fixing policies I had laid in place. All the rest I had to do some fancy tap dancing with the end user's (mostly Doctors:eek:) not have our operation shut down because of it.

I don't know Jack Schitt about this stuff anymore so I am steering clear of the registry.

What happened to the good ole days of downloading "regclean.exe" sitting back and clicking "continue" and it fixes all problems in the registry.:(

hearingimpared

wz2p7j wrote: »

Go to start - run and type in "msconfig"

Go to the "startup" tab and uncheck EVERYTHING you don't recognize. In fact you can even "disable all" if you want to.

Then restart the computer and see if it runs any faster.

Chris

Okay Chris! I just had a heart attack. I ran msconfig and went to the startup tab and most of what was checked I didn't recognize. Not knowing WTH I'm looking at I just left it alone.:eek::eek::eek:

Sherardp

CCleaner is freeware minus the ads and spam. Excellent software that I use daily.