Registry Cleaner

[patrickpawlowsk]

Does anyone know of a free/open source registry cleaner? I am looking for something that will scan the registry and remove any entries that reference non-existing files.

I just spent 4 hours yesterday trying to clean up a clients laptop that had EarthLink installed on it. EarthLink was not compatible with their business CRM software because their CRM software used IE 6.0+ to render it's html and apparently EarthLink somehow jacks up IE.

EL wouldn't remove with the uninstaller. First the uninstaller wouldn't run because there was some component running in the systray. When you right clicked the icon and selected exit it would just sit there and I couldn't figure out what the process name was on the task list and after stopping all of the bewildering array of process that were running under his username it was still there. I tried uninstalling in safe mode to no avail.

So finally, in safe mode, I renamed the EL folder and rebooted which kept the systray process from starting but of course also broke the uninstaller, which I expected, but I hoped then that EL's influence on IE would also be broken. Not the case. Just about anything you tried to do, including just opening my computer, fired off a process that tried to reinstall EL. Also at this point the NIC quit working.

Finally, I bit the bullet and spent nearly an hour searching the registry and removing all reference to EarthLink. This resulted in everything working again as normal except for his NIC. Which we uninstalled and reinstalled to no avail.

At this point I turned it back over to his tech people becuase I was charged with getting the CRM software working which we support and not his underlaying networking. Somewhat of a copout I know, but if the laptop were fully under my charge it would have been reformated after the first hour.

Essentially, their company paid my company half the value of the laptop for that 4 hours of support and I didn't see the point in me continuing what their own people could work on. And ultimately the problem was not with the CRM product but with whatever EarthLink did to IE.

Rant over.

Back to the original question. Does anyone know of a free/open source utility that will scan the registry and remove old outdated references?

Thanks,

[patrickpawlowsk]

Damn, I ramble too much! It took me all that text to ask a simple question! Somebody stop me!

[Croc Hunter]

*Gets duct tape out..

PAL Registry Cleaner does a pretty good job ;)
http://www.comparepctuneups.com/

[IanS]

*Gets duct tape out..

PAL Registry Cleaner does a pretty good job ;)
http://www.comparepctuneups.com/I use Registry Mechanic from PCTools.

[David Byrnes]

However, neither of these is Free/Open Source. Both have a $29 registration to actually clean anything. I'm trying one right now called CCleaner, available at www.ccleaner.com, and it seems pretty good so far. As soon as it finishes, I'll report back on it.

EDIT: I like it. It found the same number of problems as Registry Mechanic, fixed them all, and it's freeware. However, as with all things registry related, use with caution.

[patrickpawlowsk]

I downloaded ccleaner and it's pretty unbelievable. I was a little concerned about what it was going to do so I ghosted an image of my workstation first and then ran it. It ran for quite a while but removed almost 4 Gb of crap from my machine. The registry cleaner is a different process. I was playing with it at home and it too seemed pretty impressive. The first time I ran it, it found a bunch of invalid reg entries. I let it clean them up and then went in and renamed one of my application folders. I ran the registry cleaner again and it found 200+ broken references in the registry refering to that folder including shortcuts and class ids. It also has an option to run at startup which is completely silent. Sounds like an excellent way to keep you computer clean and it sure runs circles around Windows cleanup wizard.

[patrickpawlowsk]

And it's free!

[IanS]

And it's free!
I was amazed! I downloaded and ran ccleaner on two machines that have, 'SpySweeper' from Web Root, 'Registry Mechanic' from PCTools and 'Spy Doctor' from PCTools installed as well as Norton Internet Security. ccleaner removed lots of 'problems' and saved over 650Mb of disk space on my main machine - although I did find I had to run it 3 times on that machine and twice on another to get to the stage where it found nothing.

[David Byrnes]

I was amazed! I downloaded and ran ccleaner on two machines that have, 'SpySweeper' from Web Root, 'Registry Mechanic' from PCTools and 'Spy Doctor' from PCTools installed as well as Norton Internet Security. ccleaner removed lots of 'problems' and saved over 650Mb of disk space on my main machine - although I did find I had to run it 3 times on that machine and twice on another to get to the stage where it found nothing.
Plus it's FAST! And it's not a memory hog. Registry mechanic really slowed my machine down, but ccleaner seemed to barely use any memory. I REALLY like this program This ones definitely a "keeper".