anandk wrote:
> Only if you constantly install/uninstall programs, should you consider using
> a registry cleaner.
>


Oh, why? Especially when it's never been demonstrated that orphaned
entries do any harm, or that using any registry "cleaner" does any good?
What's the point?


> among freeware i can safely vouch for 'ccleaner'.


I disagree. Granted, CCleaner's registry scanner seems relatively
benign, as long as you step through each detected "issue" one at a time,
to determine if it really is an "issue" or not, and then decide whether
or not to let the application "fix" it. In my testing, though, most of
the reported "issues" won't be issues, at all. I tried the latest
version on a brand-new OS installation with no additional applications
installed, and certainly none installed and then uninstalled, and
CCleaner still managed to "find" over a hundred allegedly orphaned
registry entries and dozens of purportedly "suspicious" files. Its
findings were utter nonsense, in plain terms.

CCleaner's only real strength, and the only reason I use it, lies
in its usefulness for cleaning up unused temporary files from the hard
drive; as a registry "cleaner," it's not significantly different from
any other snake oil product of the same type.


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