It also depends on how aggressively you want to clean your registry.
Programs like CCleaner, Advanced System Care and Glary Utilities perform a
superficial cleaning of the registry that is unlikely to cause any harm, but
some stand-alone registry cleaners perform a more thorough registry cleaning
that could really make a mess of things. For this reason, I now avoid
stand-alone registry cleaners, whose benefits are dubious at best, anyway.
Gerald
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doris and Chris" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Blind-Computing] Registry Cleaning Program
Whether or not a lay person should use any kind of registry cleaning
software is subject to debate and you will find some people who tell you
not to clean your registry at all. It is true that monkeying around in
your registry can render your computer unoperational at worst.
With this warning up front, i have used registry cleaning tools for just
about as long as I have used a computer that uses a registry. <g> IN the
good old win 9x. days, Mickysoft themselves had a free registry tool for
download. this does not work anymore on versions of windows newer than 2k,
I believe.
As to when to clean your registry, many consider this a part of regular
computer maintenance and how often you clean out your registry largely
depends on how often you change something on your computer that writes to
the registry. Computer maintenance includes other tasks as well such as
defragging (and there are some that tell you not to defrag a computer
either), running your antimalware and antivirus software, etc.
Your registry is written to each time you install a program, change a file
association, have a program store a setting in the registry, etc. when
you, on the other hand, uninstall a program, often "orphan keys" are left
behind in the registry that are no longer needed but take up space and
have the computer do more work when it scans the registry for
information.Additionally, even when information is deleted from the
registry when uninstalling a program etc, "holes" are left in the registry
similar to when you delete a file from your hard drive. When you run a
registry cleaning tools, it checks the registry for information that is no
longer connected to anything you have installed or set on the computer.
and it takes those parts out and thus eliminates redundant information the
computer goes thru each time it accesses the registry. Ideally, after you
ran your registry cleaning tool, you should also defrag your registry to
align everything nicely and streamline it by getting rid off empty spaces
in the registry caused by either uninstalling a program, etc. or by the
work of the registry cleaner itself when it deleted unnecessary
information.
If you decide to run a registry cleaner,make sure you create a restore
point beforehand and also back up your registry before running the
cleaner. A good registry cleaner will either automatically create a backup
of your current settings of the registry befoer changing anything or it
will at least offer to do so.
As to which registry cleaner to use, this is largely a matter of choice
that depends on a few of your personal preferences, resources, etc. it is
best to download the program of yourchoice or a trial version thereof (if
you decide to go for a commercial program, the program should at least
offer a trial version so you can check it out how well it works and how
accessible it is. Whether or not you consider a program accessible or not,
also is largely a personal thing. some people will want or need to be able
to cover everything by tabbing and clicking while others are comfortable
using their screenreaders mouse emulation and screen review cursor.
Additionally you may want to google for reviews of any program you may
want to use.
Personally, I am cheap and a fairly proficient computer user. So I go for
free programs and will consider anything that can be used with the mouse
emulation if needed.
a good starter for a registry cleaner is "c-cleaner" (get the "slim"
versionwithout a toolbar. It offers registry cleaning as wel as a bunch of
other cleaning options. I do use c-cleaner but for the most part and
longest time use a program called "abexo registry cleaner". Googling for
"Abexo free registry cleaner" should get you what you need. Abexo is a
very thorough cleaner that works from win 95 up; I have had no way to test
it under anything beyond xp.
As I said, I have used registry cleaning tools for almost as long as we
have had windows computers and never had a problem but once. That one time
was pretty hefty, though, and I would have been in big trouble if I had
not been using a hardware synthesizer at the time. I had uninstalled some
sound related software and when running Abexo after uninstalling the
program, Abexo was a little too thorough and cleaned out some parts of my
soundcard driver that the program in question must have overwritten (it
was one of those that installed a virtual sound device). After the cleanup
and subsequent reboot, my computer was dead silent and I needed to
reinstall my sound drivers. Using my hardware synth and knowing how to
deal with driver installs and troubleshooting such a problem, it was no
big deal for me. However, someone relying on software speech on a single
soundcard would have been in big trouble and would have needed sighted
assistence to restore the computer.
So while in most cases it is good and appropriate to run a registry
cleaning tool on a regular basis, the answer is not the same always for
everyone.
As for getting an accessible registry cleaner, if you want to use
something other than c-cleaner, any of the blindness related computer
resource sites such as jfwlite.com or Mr. Tekkkie Dave's jaws user website
probably has a couple of registry cleaners in their program section. this
is a good place to start as these are usually accessible and free and have
been used and tested by other blind computer users. If you are more
adventurous, you can just google for what you want and find programs and
try them out or go to a computer sshareware site like ZDnet and search
their database and try out what you find.
hth
Doris
At 08:19 AM 10/6/2011 -0500, you wrote:
To All Listers:
How can I tell if my registry needs to be cleaned and, if so, what
registry cleanup programs are out there that are totally blind friendly
via JAWS 11?
Many thanks.
Jerry
"The great thing about faith is that you don't have to see the light at
the end of the tunnel to know that it is there!"
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