Tech Support Forum - Announcements in Forum : Windows XP Support

Geekgirl · 01-04-2008 until 02-04-2020

After a long discussion, the Microsoft Support Forum Staff have come to the same conclusion - Registry Cleaners, while sometimes useful, can and will ultimately cause more problems than they solve.

There is no reliable way for a third party program to know whether any particular key is invalid, redundant or neither. Poorly designed registry cleaners may not know for sure whether a key is still being used by Windows or what detrimental effects removing it may have. This has led to examples of registry cleaners causing loss of functionality and/or system instability.
Although the advantages look like they outweigh the disadvantages it will only cause harm to the system.
Good info,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registry_cleaner

Leo Notenboom (Ask Leo!) Wrote

Quote:

My fundamental belief is that the best registry cleaner is no registry cleaner at all. Most people simply don't need it, and don't need to run one.
Many people reach for a registry cleaner when an application is having problems, or when Windows is misbehaving. The problem is that these types of situations rarely respond to registry "cleaning" - it often requires application or Windows-specific resolution.

Please refrain from advising that members use these utilities.

Thank you
TSF Management