OT: Registry cleaners ???

I would like the advice of people in this group, even though this is
somewhat OT to the subject of ASUS motherboards.

I've heard many different things about registry cleaners. Agree?

1. You should never use of these utilities.
2. Many of these utilities are too "aggressive" in identifying
registry entries to fix.
3. It makes no real difference in system performance, or system
startup times, if you use one of these tools.
4. You will improve your system performance, or startup time,
sometimes dramatically, if you use the right tool.

So as a result of downloading a driver update tool, I got a web page
ad for Uniblue Registry Booster. I downloaded the trial, and it
detected over 900 (!) errors on a ThinkPad T61 that is about 16 months
old, running Windows XP SP 3 plus a whole bunch of apps.

Here is what it found:

Missing CLSIDs - lots and lots of them
Missing or Bad/File
Empty Key
Missing or Invalid Path - lots and lots of them
Missing TypeLib
Bath Path - seem to be a result of software that was uninstalled
Invalid Shortcuts - documents that have been moved or deleted

No other kinds of errors.

So should I accept the recommendation to fix all these problems? Or
would I be better off scratching the drive and reinstalling the apps
and data?

Should I accept the recommendation to defrag the registry? Does
defragging without cleanup improve anything?

In advance thanks for the advice.
-AH
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: Registry cleaners ???
    ... I've heard many different things about registry cleaners. ... It makes no real difference in system performance, ... running Windows XP SP 3 plus a whole bunch of apps. ... Missing CLSIDs - lots and lots of them ...
    (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus)
  • Re: Driver Question
    ... the registry. ... As long as you expect to get an array of WCHARs, missing 0-term does ... This is why I took Skywing's advice a bit sceptically ...
    (microsoft.public.development.device.drivers)
  • Re: Error opening & saving attachments in OE6
    ... I don't see how downloading ie6setupOe.exe is going to install OE. ... I always clean the Prefetch folder ... deleting all .pf files and leaving only the layout.ini file - as per advice ... have affected my OE6 and/or the registry. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)
  • Re: New computer, which security software?
    ... Spybot would be a good additional spyware scanner. ... Be Clean is the best ... To protext your XP from sending stuff home to MS I advice XP Antispy ... RegSeeker is the only genue registry scanner that can somehow ...
    (alt.computer.security)
  • Re: Error opening & saving attachments in OE6
    ... May I expect next advice as to how to try and resolve the problem? ... Registry Mechanic; RegistryProt 2.0) may have caused the ... Having sorted through the above morass, see if my original suggestion ... folders created for this purpose. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)