Raxco Perfect Registry

mcapotosto · ‎10-21-2011

Does anyone know why Raxco's Perfect Registry Software would find over 600 errors right after the Norton Registry Cleaner did its job? Is the Norton product inferior? Does Raxco make up errors that simply aren't errors?

DistEd2 · ‎08-11-2011

Hi, mcapotosto,

Ironically, a lot of the Gurus here think that Norton's registry cleanup is too aggressive! I wouldn't turn anything that would want to "fix" 600 things that Norton knew well enough to leave alone loose on any machine that I'm responsible for--personally or professionally--and I've been an IT leader for a quarter-century!

The thing is, the Registry is a very complex and delicate thing. What constitutes an "error" in it is very much a subjective call--for example, many of what get called "registry errors" are things that look like stray keys...but which are, in fact, still serving some essential purpose. They may be tagged to a piece of software that you no longer have installed, for example...but are also being used (perhaps without appropriate documentation) by other programs or functions as well--and "cleaning" them will cause them all to crash at your feet.

A lot of experts don't advise touching the registry at all, if there's any way you can possibly avoid it. There's just too much that can go wrong, and leave you with a mess you could format your hard drive and reload before you'd ever straighten out. So I'd run, don't walk, in the opposite direction from this hack job you've come across, and if you absolutely must do some housekeeping on your registry, trust it to Norton!

delphinium · ‎11-21-2008

What is found, for the most part, is not errors. There may be shared .dlls that may or may not still be shared, the may be extensions in the various software that are not used, and therefore considered to be unneeded by some cleaners. Unfortunately they might still be required, just not in use at the time. There may also be a lot of Windows uninstallers. They are useful for cleaning out temp files, and browser caches, and old Windows log files.

Before running any cleaner, it is imperative that you read each item to be cleaned, which means deleted by the way, know what the file does or what it belongs to, before dumping it. Always back it up before cleaning in case of error. Cleaners do not really do what the advertising says they do.

Under certain circumstances profanity provides relief denied even to prayer.
Mark Twain

devnulllore · ‎09-30-2011

Dear god in heaven above! (sorry to all you atheists) STAY AWAY from Raxco PerfectRegistry!

I have ALWAYS been against registry cleaners. They almost (99% of the time) do more harm than good. They ALL use the same ancient algorithms they used for Windows 98 and not much has changed. The only consistent thing they do is remove potentially important registry entries, sometime truncating the registry altogether.

BUT, since I use Raxco PerfectDIsk I tried PerfectRegistry thinking it can't be that bad coming from Raxco huh?. After reboot I could not access my OS at all. I had to restore off of an Acronis Image boot disk. I lost some important data too that I created between the time I made the backup and the time I used PerfectRegistry.

Since I work from home the law department of my company is in talks with Raxco now.

dev
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“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something” Plato 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC

yank · ‎12-02-2009

May I ditto,ditto,ditto for the last three posts.

Additionally, I have never run the Norton Registry Cleaner, because unless it has changed over the years - it does not ask if you want to delete registry entires it finds atilt - it just deletes them.

RoloX2 · ‎10-14-2011

mcapotosto wrote:
Does Raxco make up errors that simply aren't errors?

All registry cleaners do. Even the ones from Win 9x.

(incorrectly flag, not necessarily defraud you)

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mcapotosto · ‎10-21-2011

It seems that the universal feedback is to simply not use any registry cleaner unlerss you really know what you are doing and can review any deletions - which in my case I don't. Thank you all for your feedback !