I am so a computer novice, but I recently a aquired a machine (Gateway 2000) that I did a registy mechanic scan on, and found 324 problems. My question is that the free registry mechanic will only fix so many before they ask you to purchase. Fair enough.. But I would like to find repair software for free, because of a low budget. People have told me it's out there, but not exactly where. can someone help me be a better fixer thru software? :)
I appreciate any, and all help. Thank you..

Hi.

Your best bet is to post the details of your problem and maybe someone can help you. That's much better than trusting those unreliable Registry fixers, that sometimes cause new problems.

Sorry, I do not check for private messages

I agree with Ham30. Registry fixers often cause more problems than they are worth. The free ones are not likely to be any better. Most of the errors these registry scanners produce are trivial and can be safely ignored - they just want your money.

You best solution, the most reliable one if you are having problems with the OS, is to re-install.

Stuart

Apart from the Registry Mechanic reports, are you having any other problems at all?

You can always "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and type scanreg /fix which is a facility provided by MS and quite harmless. What it might do or not do for what Registry Mechanic reported remains to be seen.

DerekW

Two of the better known free ones are M$ Regclean, and JV's Regcleaner.

Caution should be employed, but usually backups are made, just in case.

Frequently the so called "problems" aren't quite so bad - things like recently used (but orphaned) file lists for various applications. You don't need them, but not a huge deal either.

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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I did a some long-winded research on the registry cleaners I had onboard. It would be pointless putting it all in this post so I'll restrict my comment to the two that jboy mentioned.

jv16 is just fine if you stick to the first page where it lists Authors and their Software. You simply get it to delete anything that you know has already been uninstalled. As far as the actual cleaner is concerned it can mess-up the restore when you do the undo (not the only cleaner that gets this wrong). It goes like this:

jv16 produces a list of invalid items. It can find an invalid Value and then later on (same run) remove the Key itself (folder). If you use the undo it will restore, quite wrongly, in the order saved. When it tries to restore the Value there will be no Key so it will NOT restore the Value. It then, later, restores the key. This is been proven!

In summary you will not get the value back when you restore the entry unless you put each item back in reverse order - messy but possible if you are into reg files.

MS RegClean does not delete Keys, only Values, so is safer than jv16 in terms of getting the restore right (ie the restore order is less important).

DerekW

You may want to run a malware scan with something like adaware. Malware will cause more problems than orphaned registry entries. With adaware it's best to install version 1.05 (if you can find it) instead of 1.06, as the newer version is free for a trial period only.

... for anyone reading my #5, although the overall effect is as stated, this bit about the mechanism is pedantically incorrect:

"When it tries to restore the Value there will be no Key so it will NOT restore the Value."

It DOES "initially" restore the value because the complete path including key is saved. What then happens, later in the saved .reg file, is it overwrites with the key only (without the value), so the value gets lost.

DerekW

A format and reinstall seems quicker and safer for the OP. I agree it would be nice if we knew the problems, but Miss Cleo will be back tomorrow so we will not have to guess....

Format & reinstall seems a bit excessive, based on reported registry "problems" - no actual issues have been mentioned

DAVE - is that right? Bryco brought this up the other day, and the consensus was that the 'Personal' version is still freeware.

The Lavasoft page says:

This software is downloadable free of charge.

.. which is (admittedly) ambiguous

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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I haven't tried 1.06 myself. Whenever it asked about upgrading (when downloading new definitions) I'd always answer no. But I had someone on whose PC I'd installed 1.05 awhile back who had upgraded. After 15 days or so he started getting the 'end of trial' messages. So I uninstalled it and put 1.05 back on.

I never saw anything on lavasoft's site about it being free for a trial period only but that's the only thing I could think of. (Unless he somehow managed to install one of the other adaware versions. I never checked to see what he'd actually done.)

If others are running 1.06 without that problem then I must be wrong. Or maybe lavasoft again made it freeware.

There's SE 1.06 Pro, which is a licensed (paid) version. Hopefully that's the source of the confusion - it'd be a shame if they withdrew or time limited the free one

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html>Everest Home Edition is becoming rare too.Seems the {Lava} people are getting hungry.Might make a good movie.Oh, Well

"unreliable Registry fixers, that sometimes cause new problems"

"Registry fixers often cause more problems than they are worth"

I 100% DISAGREE- as a long-time user of PCTools Registry Mechanic 5.0 i have to say this is bull crap. THESE REGISTRY FIXERS DO HELP, CLEANING INVALID/OBSOLETE FILE EXTENSIONS, CUSTOM CONTROLS AND MORE NOT TO MENTION THE OBVIOUSLY USEFUL CLEANING OF THE ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS LIST CLEARING OUT ENTRIES FOR SOFTWARE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS

the companies' claims are not advertising nonesense these errors really do slow down the computer alot and in the event of them causing more problems the vast majority including registry mechanic back up the registry first to allow for an 'undo' of what was done. but THIS IS NOT EVEN NECESSARY BECAUSE THEY DO GOOD NOT HARM

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS THAT PEOPLE HAVE AGAINST THIRD-PARTY COMPUTER MAINTENANCE SOFTWARE WHEN IT ACTUALLY DOES GOOD EVEN IF IT REQUIRES PAYING-FOR

my computer with a 1.0ghz P3 and 512mb SDRAM runs better then my aunt's brand-new EMachine with a 3.2ghz P4 and 512mb DDR RAM, because of the third-party software that others call "junk"

get it right and dont bash on 'em before you've tried 'em

Wow! Thank you all. I defintatly understand the pros and cons to these reg. cleaners, cause, I ran reg mech cleaner 4.0 on my win98sec and I have to say one thing good for it. THANK GOD for automatically backing up.. Cause I wouuldn't be sitting here writing this. My machine got all kind of confused, BUT when I ran the same cleaner on the beater machine (gateway2000win98)I recently aquired it seems to have come back from the brink, But it's So Slooooo I think the rest of the problem is that it has aol on it. Is this how it became to be known as A O HELL ? Aol seems to want to bully over the other programs? I don't have the OS disk, so I quess starting from scratch is out of the question?? It would be the first time formatting and reinstalling, and would look foward to it but with no disk, it's a no can do?
Again thank you all, cause it's guys and gals like you that have bailed me out, on my bumbleing adventures in to the computers world.
Hi.

>> get it right and don't bash on 'em before you've tried 'em <<

I have, many of them over a period of twenty years. Registry cleaners are either useless or disasters waiting to happen.

You will learn the hard way one day.

Stuart

AOL is very much a system hog, LOL

i cannot beleive that the registry cleaner would screw anything up as i said i have used registry mechanic 5.0 since it came out (3.0 before that) with NO PROBLEMS what-so-ever

Lone Wolf

How do you account for the fact that twice I've had registry cleaners wreck two programs and this was quite repeatable? If I put the registry entries back the programs worked again. I could do this as many times as I liked.

Do you also dispute my findings about the undo's? The logic is clear enough and again this was all totally repeatable. With some cleaners I tested the same two Values were never restored.

Rename the file webcheck.dll then examine this entry in regedit:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8E6E6079-0CB7-11d2-8F10-0000F87ABD16}\DefaultIcon]
@="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM\\webcheck.dll,0"

Run jv16 or CleanReg, for example, then see if the Value (last line) comes back when you run the undo. The only ones that restore this Value are ones that save in reverse order, so examine the .reg file that they produce.

There is another aspect. If a registry cleaner removes a valid entry you don't always realise at the time. At some later time you have to fix the problem, not even realising that a registry cleaner caused it.

I would therefore never use big bold letters on this forum that give mis-information and could lead other people into problems on their machines.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be touched with a barge pole, in fact I use them myself. What I am saying is that they should be used with care and a sweeping OK to any of them is irresponsible.

DerekW

It should come as no great surprise that "Lone Wolf" - aka "Brenda(n) J. LeBaige" - is the same knob (Tech_dude) singing the same sorry tune yesterday, and offering cracked versions of System Mechanic via email (posts naturally deleted)

So very many aliases - pity none of them add up to much of anything

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is not more a science than a heap of stones is a home

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why cant you just f--- off jboy seriously dude

anyway it is not that i dont beleive those of you with registry cleaner horror stories i just personally have never had any problems in many years of using them and dont beleive that because of a few occasional mishaps they should be avoided at all costs and written off as nothing but useless ones and zeros

Ignoring the smut, what proof have you that registry cleaners do any good?

DerekW

take my mom's computer. it was loading windows (xp pro) in 8 "ticks" and often giving her program has encountered error screens etc. ran full spyware malware virus scans defragged etc no good then i convinced her to let me put registry mechainc on it. ran scan, found 324 ERRORS!!! after the scan i restarted her computer. now it loaded in 5 "ticks" and she was using it for the rest of the day and experienced no more of those encountered an error messages, not to mention it reomved the very annoying add/remove programs entry for something she had uninstalled a year ago but the uninstall didnt remove it from the list for some reason

Fine, I accept that.

Don't you think it was a lot more constructive and sensible than all that BOLD stuff you trotted out earlier?

It's called "how to behave on a forum".

Thx

DerekW

LOL yeah i guess you're right sorry