Over the years, I have tried some registry repair products and found many or most cause as many problems as they may solve. Nevertheless, my nearly 3 year desktop appears to need a registry cleaning and/or repair. I have searched the internet for reviews of the best of the current crop and not surprising, each site touts its favorite as the best. As I recall, even Norton has had a product on the market.
It's funny that I have even inadvertantly tried some of those online scanners which purport to find thousands of errors, won't fix them unless you pay, and after sometimes difficult times uninstalling them, find THEY have left debris on the computer. (Just this morning NIS found something left over from a scanner.)
Since this group is as tech savvy as any I know, can you suggest a third party safe and effective registry repair product?
I would also suggest CCleaner if your really feel you must!
I'd run the cleanup part first and see how much difference that makes before I tried Registry Cleaning.
It lists everything it thinks needs doing after checking the system and you have to agree -- you can uncheck items you may be doubtful about or know should be as they are.
AND it asks if you want to back up the registry before any changes.
One piece of advice: when you first open the program and click on Registry look in the left column and UNCHECK the Fonts entry so that it does not make any chanages.
Especially in Windows 7 there are hundreds of fonts installed that may seem to be irrelevant to one's own country and use BUT at least some of these are required by Windows internally and I've seen Windows installations broken by someone saying "Oh I'll never need that font (even an English one) and then Windows doesn't work properly because it is part of the format of the display!
Cricket Umpires are taught a useful guide: "When in doubt, say Not Out!"....