Phil, I'll give you my 2c worth:
I use a little suite of cleaners on my W98SE rig - in fact I put the same
set of progs on every PC I build. I set up a folder on the desktop called
Cleanup, and inside are shortcuts, numbered in the order of use.
1. AdAware - this gets rid of the spyware.
2. RegClean - this is a free Microshaft prog, and works pretty well on 99%
of PC's.
3. RegCleaner - this is also free. It's produced by a clever young Finnish
guy named Jouni Vuorio. Again, works on most machines.
4.Cleanup.bat - this is a freebie that was written by Fred Langa. It cleans
out all the temp folders, junks all the TIF's and cookies, runs Scandisk and
reboots.
5. DeFrag. Here I use Vopt, which I think is the best defragger going, but
you may have to pay for it. There are others, I guess.
(If anyone wants the Langa batchfile, mail me. I think I've posted it here
before so I won't do it again).
After I run this lot, which is about once a week, I go into the
C:\Windows\sysbckup folder and rename the file of the day to rb***.99
(instead of rb***.cab, *** being the number of the file)
The .99 suffix tells me it's a 'nearly-good' file, so if there's a disaster
in the process, at least I have that one to fall back on.
Then I reboot so Windows will build a fresh, up-to-date cabfile.
After the reboot, I rename the new cabfile to rb---.1st or 2nd etc. Every
couple of months, I dump all of the older ones
The reason for the renaming the cabfiles to .99 or .1st etc is so Windows
won't delete the file, which it does after the default period of 5 days, if
the file has a .cab extension.
HTH
Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]
PS - I once used WinDoctor out of Norton Utils, but it was a big hassle
installing the prog just to get Windoctor, so I canned it. Both RegClean and
RegCleaner have 'undo' mechanisms, so their changes aren't irrevocable.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Gagne" Subject: [PCSOFT] Registry and system check utilities
> I was just wondering if anyone can recommend a good freeware system
checker,
> including checking the registry for invalid entries and the like. I'm
> currently using one provided by Norton and I'm not impressed. It detects
> the problems alright, but to repair some problems in the registry it
> defaults to another program where you have to remove the registry entries
> yourself. If you're not familiar with the registry this could be a very
> dangerous thing. Any help is appreciated. pg
"Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
http://freepctech.com/rode
|
