Vista - Big Problem with Registry Cleaner

Well, I went and did exactly what I said I wouldn't do. I bought a Registry Cleaner. Oh, yes, it was recommended by all these magazines and companies that had the best credentials I'd ever seen; and I got "pulled in". Well, I ran it twice and guess what happened? Everything, every operation was denied to me. I couldn't even do a system restore or recovery. I couldn't even connect to the Internet.

So the only thing left to do was a system recovery with my creation disks. Luckily my printer still worked, so I printed out the information on how to do it...and I did it.

Yes, I had to replace everything, but I learned a valuable lesson again.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT! (or don't try to mess with it and install things you "THINK" will make it better.)

And don't be swayed by those ads that tell you how great a product is. I messed my computer up again, like I've done many times, but I learned from it.

A hint: if you order a program or something you have to re-install, ALWAYS order a disc for it. Saved me many a trial and headaches! I also keep all my usernames and passwords and certain info like licesnse codes in an address book, just in case I forget them. It sure beats having to go throught the mess of asking for licesnses, etc. I keep it on my desk and refer to it often.

Again: LIVE AND LEARN!!!!

I hope someone out there learns from my mistake about this. Yes, some cleaners may be fine for some computers..but not for me!

Registry Cleaners are never a good idea unless you know how to use them, and in fact, unfortunately, are marketed as "fix all, Increase PC performance" gimmicks for those who dont know any better.
(For those who have no idea what a dynamic link library entry is, or what a svchost executable is. These are critical Windows/Program components. Deleting them may cause instability/crashes/non-functional programs. svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries. it is not uncommon to see many, many svchost.exe's running at the same time- deleteing these from the registry, or killing the process stops services from running that are needed for either Windows or Installed Programs).

Reg cleaners are not able to distinguish between legitimate and unwanted entries, and more often than not end up deleting Critical Windows .dll entries (amongst other things), ultimately resulting in Windows corruption and the need for Vista reinstallation.

A rule of thumb is-
If you know what the purpose is of the entry is that the cleaner want to "clean", and let it clean it, it works fine, If you dont know the purpose, then do not let it clean it- or you will be re-installing Windows.

I would ask for a refund. If you want to improve Vista performance, there are other ways. check out this link:How To Make Vista more responsive and faster

Read this:
Do not use registry cleaners!

Thank you zberryman for that post lets hope it does indeed help others avoid the dangers of using a registry cleaner.

It is never a good idea to let 3rd party software dabble into the workings of the OS, it is quite capable of looking after itself and if you don't know how to clean the registry yourself how can you expect a program by someone else do it, especially when there are so many combinations running out there.

My 2 cents worth on the topic: Tried a registry de-fragmentation program as an alternative to a cleaner having learned a lesson as mentioned by the OP. Turned out that by using this program to straighten out my registry so it can run "better", I lost all my windows restore points! Now I just learned to back-up the registry first if I (ever) do decide to alter or mess with it. Its easy and safe. I hear that CCleaner's registry tool is ok as it offers a back-up of what it fixes and its not so aggressive at finding problems.

Doesn't hurt to use ERUNT for backup and NTREGOPT for optimizing. Both are free from the same programmer and work in any Windows NT based system. For cleaning you might search out the free version of jv16PowerTools. You can have it search for "dead links" in the registry and group them all together. Then if you know for sure the software they are used with is not on the system, you can select and delete.

Reg cleaning is a minimal optimization with a big risk. If you do it, do everything you can to be in a position to put stuff back the way it was if it goes wrong. A system image backup is a good idea. External USB drives are relatively cheap now and you can get imaging backup programs where the restore actually works reliably, for free.

Thanks Miles for the tip on ERUNT...:-)

reg cleaners NO , waste of time , a good reg defragmenter however YES