CCleaner has become too complicated, good registry cleaner recommendations

[Lesthegringo]

Hi all, as the title says, CCleaner now is so complicated and intrusive, I am having to delete it. When I try to use it to for example clean junk files, instead of the 'cleanup now' button, you get a banner asking you to install something, say an extension for Chrome. There is no way to say no, or delete the banner, so there is no way to clean the junk files. Hence, CCleaner is out, despite being useful for so many years in the past.

However one of it's functions I would like to continue to have in another form is the registry cleaner, so can you all recommend any particular one?

Cheers

Les

 

[blekenbleu]

I just updated CCleaner Free to v6.09 with no issues.
In the past, downloading new versions from a web browser
would also occasionally bundle other stuff,
particularly if I missed unchecking some small checkbox.
That has not yet happened to me when updating from within CCleaner..

 

[Deleted member 197115]

People still use this malware that can make your PC nonoperational?

 

[blekenbleu]

People still use this malware that can make your PC nonoperational?

People still use Windows, which can make your PC nonoperational.

 

[jgf]

CCleaner was a nice util, but recently discredited for datamining/malware issues. Don't know if those have been acceptably addressed.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

People still use Windows, which can make your PC nonoperational.

Hard not to considering the "choices".
But in all seriousness, I don't remember last time I had any serious issues with Windows, even with PC that went through upgrades from 8 to 10 to 11.
Shocker, right?

 

[Terry Rock]

Glarysoft Utilities pro

 

[jgf]

Hard not to considering the "choices".
But in all seriousness, I don't remember last time I had any serious issues with Windows, even with PC that went through upgrades from 8 to 10 to 11.
Shocker, right?

Depends on what you consider "serious issues". I recently read an article by someone curious about W11 telemetry; they did a clean W11 install on a new clean PC, along with net activity monitoring software. The first hour W11 was running it contacted over one hundred websites worldwide. Why? While I am no programmer, no one can convince me this is necessary to the functioning of any OS.

When I first read of W10 I knew I wanted no part of it. W11 amplified the worst aspects of W10 and added more. I will stick with Win7 until it is no longer viable as an OS, then I will learn Linux. (Given that Win7 is still in widespread use there's a good chance I will expire before it does.)

 

[RasmusP]

Depends on what you consider "serious issues". I recently read an article by someone curious about W11 telemetry; they did a clean W11 install on a new clean PC, along with net activity monitoring software. The first hour W11 was running it contacted over one hundred websites worldwide. Why? While I am no programmer, no one can convince me this is necessary to the functioning of any OS.

When I first read of W10 I knew I wanted no part of it. W11 amplified the worst aspects of W10 and added more. I will stick with Win7 until it is no longer viable as an OS, then I will learn Linux. (Given that Win7 is still in widespread use there's a good chance I will expire before it does.)

While I can't be bothered to find a source for this stuff, that were probably:
- Windows Updates connecting to multiple servers

- the "news" feed that's not in the task bar loading a LOT of article previews, weather etc

- edge doing it's initializing process in the background so when you start it, you'll have the correct starting page for your localisation and "recommendations" pre-loaded

So while not necessary, it's totally normal.
The hidden telemetry stuff isn't cool though, but I saw a lot of people telling me how shitty Windows would be for spying on you all the time and how much better Apple would be, while chatting via Facebook messages about family plans and sending documents via WhatsApp to get them on their other devices

 

[RasmusP]

And back to topic:
If you have an ssd, you don't need to clean up the registry at all. It doesn't make any difference to performance and takes only a few KB of space.

Deleting the junk files would be way more important, although I didn't do any kind of that since 2020 and I don't see any unreasonably big folders on my system.
Temporary files get deleted after some time and if you manually put too much trash/junk on your drive, then cleaning up manually might be a good idea anyway.

The only thing that can take a lot of space are the "shadow copies", which are your restore points basically and the Windows Update backup files.

Both can easily be cleaned by running the stock Disk Cleanup utility in admin mode.

Only do that if your system is currently stable and healthy!
Then do a manual restore point right after deleting the files you want to delete.

 

[Lesthegringo]

Thanks - it's due to me trying to get a program working that has just stopped, in instances like this in the past I have found that cleaning the registry has helped

Cheers

Les

 

[BrunoBæ]

I use an old JV16 Power Tool to clean registry and also an old Win7 Manager to delete all junk files.
Hehe on my trusted Win7 system - ofcourse

 

[blekenbleu]

you don't need to clean up the registry at all.

Some software, including from Intel, leave traces in registry
that confound subsequent software installations.

recently discredited

There was, in 2017

I don't remember last time I had any serious issues with Windows

My desktop PC (originally provisioned with Windows 8, then 8..1)
worked much better after a fresh install. but too often fails Windows Update.
This has occurred less often with Windows 10, but still too often IMO.
Recovery is tedious and not my idea of fun.

PC vendor bloatware contamination is one thing,
but fresh installs from Microsoft are still less than robust.

My experience with Linux support for old and other than mainstream hardware
has also been less than stellar.
Of course, macOS is famous for discontinuing support, as is ChromeOS.

 

[RasmusP]

Some software, including from Intel, leave traces in registry
that confound subsequent software installations.

Can you give me a source about issues being solves my cleaning these up?
I'd honestly be interested to learn something!
Sorry, no motivation to search for myself this week.

I only know about 2 scenarios where this might be needed:
- switching gpu between amd/nvidia, where ddu in safe mode does everything for you

- switching between Intel & AMD mobo+CPU without re-installing Windows.
In which case I'd think it has more to do with some initializing that Windows might do while installing. Like adjusting the scheduler for P- and E cores and that kind of thing.
- uninstall drivers
- do a Windows "repair" via the Windows ISO to hopefully trigger some re-initialization

- install drivers from amd/Intel and the mobo manufacturer to overwrite some automatically installed drivers that might not trigger to download correctly when just swapping the hardware

I'm not sure any of that stuff gets managed in the registry but as I said, happy to learn new things!

 

[blekenbleu]

Can you give me a source about issues being solves my cleaning these up?

Sorry, that was over 10 years ago.
I mostly recall being surprised that Intel software was involved,
and where offending registry entries were squirreled.
I vaguely recall it being related to running M$ Remote Desktop over VPN
to a Windows PC in a lab running X client to POSIX LAN-attached servers.
Remote Desktop was faster and more robust over VPN than X client itself over VPN.

I have not yet identified registry issues with Nvidia GPUs,
having previously more often used Matrox,
but neither AMD GPUs nor CPUs since 2010.
I resist reinstalling Windows when it goes wrong,
partly because of fussy complicated configuration,
but also to learn how to avoid repeated breakages.

I have yet to discovered what breaks Windows Updates,
experiencing 3 chronic failures in the last 5 years.

 

[RasmusP]

I have yet to discovered what breaks Windows Updates,
experiencing 3 chronic failures in the last 5 years.

Yeah I had that once too.. Took 2 years and then it went away randomly
Funnily I could always use the Windows Update "Packs" from winfuture.de to install them all in one go. Quite strange!

Sorry, that was over 10 years ago.

Ah okay, so not something frequently happening. Sounds like quite a specific use case with the remote desktop stuff.

 

[Durge Driven]

I do manual backup of registry.
Start with absolutely fresh OS and you examine regedit
Install software one at a time, make all changes to it you need then backup the registry.
After you do all apps / tools you can merge registry with Winaero
So 1 click on new install will do all the adjustments to software you make ( 60+ apps for me )
This will take years and many installs to get right for you as we all want different things.
On fresh OS I have to install just 10 apps ( all these where applicable are subscribed full version) My tools folder has 50 apps run standalone and have all their registry added in 1 click.

My main advice, do away with any software you don't need.
People think just because they have fast 1TB SSD for OS they should fill it with anything and everything, some stuff they could do with out.
Test all software on fresh OS and work out what will run standalone next time

My sim tower C drive is 100GB of a 980Pro with only 33GB used.
That's it, 33GB, so compare that with your own horribly bloated OS.
The way to a good registry is less registry.
Have a good day.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Yeah I had that once too.. Took 2 years and then it went away randomly

Unrelated but related. When doing updates for rFactor 2 content for RD servers we use SteamCMD. Suddenly, randomly it decided to download everything we had ever downloaded before - again. Every single time we downloaded new content, this happened. It downloaded our new content, then every item we had previously downloaded unless we manually forced SteamCMD to shut down.

Just as random as it arrived, it went away. No updates to our servers, to Steam or anything.

I think we had a visit from Casper the friendly server-ghost!

 

[blekenbleu]

I do manual backup of registry.
Start with absolutely fresh OS
...
This will take years and many installs to get right

I genuinely admire your discipline and patience.
MY PCs are multi-purpose tools with many hacks to emulate POSIX X terminal working environment, e.g. using Barrier with a mouse to work in Bash shell on both Windows and macOS monitors as similarly as practical.