Buddy wrote: >I feel I need a good registry cleaner>> There's little to chose between the numerous free registry cleaners===Microsoft's Regclean is probably as safe as any. The JV16 Powertools Regcleaner is excellent, within the above limitations. It has semi-manual facilities for software removal. Registry cleaners are generally pretty superficial, and it's unlikely that you'll notice any real difference after using any of them. I've tried numerous ones, but they all leave a lot of crud behind, only removing the more obvious things like orphaned entries etc. Removing these doesn't usually have much real effect on performance. By far the best solution is to do regular registry restorations, using ERUNT (assuming you have XP). It's an old Microsoft utility ("Emergency Recovery Utility"), updated and available here: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt Also download his Registry optimizer--this defrags the registry, which is useful. Both are free. Run a normal registry cleaner first, then the Optimizer, so that you have as good a registry as you can get. Then (optionally) manually go through the registry hives and remove any redundant software entries. Then make a registry backup using ERUNT and use this to restore back to your current registry in future. You may have to reinstall some of your later software, but this is by far the best way to maintain a nice clean registry. Ideally, it would be nice to make a registry backup immediately after installing Windows and the basic software. Then you have a new registry you can always go back to in a matter of a few seconds, instead of having to reinstall Windows to recover that sparkling performance you once had when everything was shiny new. And, no, System Restore won't do that. It's liable to be flaky, for one thing, and it deletes old backups as it goes, so you can't go back very far. And if you ever have to disable System Restore for troubleshooting or an online virus scan, you'll lose all restore points. Then you're really up the creek without any paddles. Don Penlington From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland. Computer tutorials, local scenery, and other things at my website: http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column. http://freepctech.com/rode