Good free registry cleaner?

[Frank E]

I've just upgraded Winamp and downloaded Registry Booster 2010 that cam with it. It is claming there are 1264 registry errors. It fixed 15 but requires a purchase to fix the rest. Bit skinto just now and cynical about the claims of tryware.


Are there any good free registry cleaners around for XP Pro 32?

Does the fact that UHPClean running indicate there are problems with the registry?

I've got RegCleaner 4.3 (circa 2001). It doesn't always launch though and it crashes often. It used to find errors Microsoft RegClean didn't

[kalniel]

ccleaner

[Zhaoman]

ccleaner is what I've been using for the last 2 years. I haven't encountered any problems with it and it does it's job really efficiently and with no bloatware at all.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[Frank E]

Thanks. That worked quickly.
I had that installed ages ago but forgot about it.

[Splash]

Be wary of registry cleaners: they have a nasty tendency to cause more problems than they solve.

[kalniel]

Be wary of registry cleaners: they have a nasty tendency to cause more problems than they solve.

It's a good point - ccleaners auto-prompted registry backup is a good thing

[Kumagoro]

fcleaner seemed to get quite a bit of stuff ccleaner didnt when i used it a couple of weeks ago.

[kalniel]

fcleaner seemed to get quite a bit of stuff ccleaner didnt when i used it a couple of weeks ago.

Was it bad stuff?

[Kumagoro]

what do you mean by bad stuff exactly?

I think it just got rid of some other temp files and some windows update uninstallers ccleaner didnt.
It didnt remove anything particularly out of the ordinary as far as I could tell.

[Splash]

what do you mean by bad stuff exactly?

Herein lies the danger of registry cleaners. It's easy to delete stuff that you *thought* was junk, but is in fact necessary.

[kalniel]

Precisely. If it was temporary files you're sure you don't need then cool. Surprising ccleaner left them alone though.

But on windows 7 I don't run any registry cleaners - for some reason drivers seem to sort themselves out far more sensibly. In XP I use ccleaner only as an aid for left over uninstall problems, and it's nice because you can specify exactly which type of things to clean.

[Lourdes]

All are a waste of time, no performance improvement at all.

[kalniel]

All are a waste of time, no performance improvement at all.

And for those of us who used them for reasons other than performance improvement?

[g8ina]

+1 ccleaner. The only other one I found better wasnt free : UniBlue's RegistryBooster. I got it on offer via Mailwasher link I think. It did find quite a few more things which ccleaner didnt. Not that it made too much difference to my PC

[CrazyMonkey]

Be careful, always use any backup options that they provide. Infact it might be a good idea to do a full hive backup anyway.

I've seen corrupted registries from the use of so called 'cleaners'.

[Lambie]

Another vote for CCleaner - if you decide to use the program cleaner facility aswell as the registry facility be sure to give the new 'Enhancer' addon a go, lets you clean up ~270 other apps

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/08/06/ccl...s-to-ccleaner/