Saturday, August 7, 2010

Do Experts Believe Registry Cleaners A Good Investment?

By Jose Watinks

There is a lot of controversy over whether registry cleaners are necessary programs for the optimal performance of your personal computer. Some reviewers claim that they will get your sluggish computer back up to speed quickly. Others say that they are completely unnecessary, and can even cause your system to malfunction or crash.

Registry cleaners basically scan your computers registry for entries like malaware, invalid or unused files, DLL files that may not be of use, and corrupted or fragmented files. They then delete these files, and the theory then is that your computer will run faster and will have less problems. However, the questions arise - is all this cleaning really necessary? Are you given the option of manually removing the files that are listed as unnecessary and harmful?

Using a registry cleaner can be dangerous, according to some experts. It may remove files that are necessary for programs to load or perform properly. It can even cause a full system crash. They state that the best results may be the gain of a few kilobytes of disk space, and maybe a faster start up. However, with the storage and disk space on most computers that is a negligible result. Are these programs just 'snake oil, ' as one expert reviewer has stated?

It is possible that the free trials of cleaners give ambiguous information about registry errors, in hopes you will buy the program. Once installed and run, you may find that your computer is faster, and loads better. However, alternatively, you just may find that it has removed some necessary registry entries and you have lost or impaired functionality. Running the program will probably not speed up your computer noticeably, and you may even find it slower because it fragments the registry.

Most of the registry cleaners on the market claim that you will need to run the program periodically in order to keep your registry clean and free of errors. However, just because there are a few orphaned entries and files, they do not affect your computer's speed or performance in a noticeable way. It may even mark some 'good' files as bad, and schedule them for removal.

Manual repair or alteration of your registry is a much safer way to go, if you are experiencing a problem. If your computer skills are not up to the task, then go hire an expert, or just leave it. With scant real data behind their claims, you should not trust software programs reviews.

Instead, to avoid problems, install only licensed programs to your system, and keep them up to date. Back up your critical data regularly. Be very cautious about installing and uninstalling trial or beta software programs. Always have a good anti-virus and malaware system running, and keep its files updated. Regularly defragment your system and delete temporary files. Just these simple stems will keep your system cleaner, and you won't need to consider the dilemma of whether or not to use registry cleaners.

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