Windows 10: Are Registry Cleaners Still Needed on Windows 10?

What's the bet that system cleaners delete the accumulated "surveillance" data that MS wants to sell?

Note the use of the word "may".

Empty keys are probably not an issue, depending exactly how Registry permissions and software interacts.
Leftover keys can contain anything, including commands:For example, .ccd key > "C:\Program Files (x86)\ImgBurn\ImgBurn.exe" /MODE WRITE /SOURCE "%1"
I hypothesise that they could be used in a multi-part attack; contaminated "trialware" installers in combination with special files or Internet sites.
The uninstaller for the contaminated installer uninstalls the program, but it "accidentally" leaves a stack of keys, which are used by the real attack.

All OS installs slow down over time, even Linux Distros.
My W10 IP VM with a handful of software (without Office or Adobe bloatware) takes twice as long to boot, as an empty W10 IP VM took.

In W7, winsxs seems to fill up with junk.
A clean install of the OS and using latest program installers, seems to run faster than an old install (on my PC).

My W7 used to sometimes boot up in ~30 seconds (even just after SP1).
Before I replaced my HDD with an SSD (a few weeks ago) it rarely booted in under ~55 seconds.

Most ordinary users don't create Backup Images OR run Registry Cleaners.

The first time I tried CCleaner was pre-W7 (on XP) and my Internet cache had 2 GB of junk in it.

In 2012, I cleaned a friend's mother's XP machine and it had 4 GB of junk.
I assume that it was still the original install and no cleaners (including Disk Cleanup) had ever been run on it.

Even though I almost never use IE10, CCleaner always finds entries in the Internet cache (FF/PM use their own cache folder).

I've tried some IObit software (several years ago) and I wasn't impressed.

 

Oh hell yah, CCleaner still comes up with hundreds of old entries.

 

I have to say though, that I turfed a Vista installation by ridding of registry entries (in CCleaner by the way) that pertained to the 1.1x branch of the .NET Framework. Also a lot of registry cleaners detect unused file associations and prompt for their removal, and then when you need that file extension, it may not work (as opposed to asking you what program to use). Just need to be careful, that's all

 

Almost Zero

 

Actually it may go into minus too, IObit is also know for spying !!!

 

Interesting reading. . .not sure who is right or wrong, so I guess I'll just sit back, and think on it for a while. . .oh wait. . .thinking is not one of my best suits. . .*Smile

 

MS would rather you didn't muck around cleaning the Registry, if they did, they'd have included a utility to do so!



*Wink

 

That's so true - they'd clearly rather you didn't shutdown your PC either or they'd have given us a button to do that *Wink

 

Ahhh they do give ya a shutdown button.....at least we have the option to shutdown the computer. I use it every nite. *Smile

 

...that would be a pale and bug-laden imitation of existing third party programs such as CCleaner.

 

Hi,

Well, there used to be one from MS a very long time ago. I think it was called regclean.exe. Probably part of a resource kit or so.

Besides that, the logic in that statement is rather flawed IMHO.
Not saying it's a must do but I still feel it's good housekeeping if you know what you're doing.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Actually in discussion about 7 while still in beta form people at TechNet were warning about the overuse of register cleaners ending up trashing Windows when removing important entries some cleaner saw as obsolete or removed by mistake. People were getting too reliant on having a cleaner in use all the time leading to all types of support requests you could trace back to some reg cleaning app!

The regcleaner.exe was never actually any MS utility but an executable placed on the drive by a 3rd party app if not some trojan dropper.

The Filenet site is generally quite accurate when you need to find things out about any file. regclean.exe Windows process - What is it?