Dave wrote:
>Recently there was a free download they =
>offered called TweakNow RegCleaner Standard.  I'm soliciting pros and =
>cons on this softwareand trying to learn about this type of software.  =
>Knowing very little about what is okay to delete and what is not, would =
>anyone suggest getting this and letting it do the dirty work for me?  =
>How can I tell if it's okay to delete something or not?>>


Frankly, I wouldn't bother.  I've been using registry cleaners for years, 
off and on , in various shapes and colors. Not once, ever, have I seen any 
noticeable difference in performance after a registry clean.  At best, 
registry cleaners are very superficial. They won't fix serious faults. 
Although they APPEAR to do a good job, in fact they make very little if any 
difference.  I did a registry clean just last week and it "found" over 500 
"errors"---most of which were simply lost paths, orphaned shortcuts, or 
mru's. I didn't notice any difference afterwards, and the registry (XP) was 
virtually no smaller in size.

Some registry cleaners are more aggressive than others, and occasionally an 
entry may get removed which may break a link or two. When you're faced with 
100's of "high priority must remove" entries, it's practically impossible 
to go through them all individually---most won't mean anything to you or me 
anyway. You just push the "clean" button and hope for the best.

Avoid cleaners which don't make a backup in case it messes up, or manually 
make a registry backup (see my web tutorial how to do this) before you clean.

Running a registry cleaner makes you feel good, thinking you now have a 
nice clean registry.  In fact the XP registry is so huge and complex that a 
cleanup won't really make much, if any, difference.

By far the best "cleaner" is a regular system of registry backups and 
restorations.  Now that really will make a difference to performance, and 
will often rescue a failing system. If you permanently keep one or two 
known good, clean registry copies, you always have these to revert to in 
times of need. There's nothing like it to rejuvenate your system. Of 
course, you may need to reinstall a few of your programs, but that's 
nothing compared with the advantages of a really clean registry. No 
registry cleaner will come anywhere close to doing that.

I don't know the particular cleaner you mention, but most of them work more 
or less in similar ways.  In my experience, registry cleaners are one of 
the most prolific, and least effective, of all classes of software.

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

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