Registry cleaning, is it real?

[#1]

Got some minor file and folder browsing issues, some things take longer than they should, especially deleting files. I'm entertaining the possibility that I have uninstalled something that has left a mess behind.
Seen lots of ads for registry cleaners, don't particularly believe the hype and back when everyone was being told to run MS regclean I read that some systems were damaged and that regclean was a developer tool not intended for wider use?

[#2]

I use CCleaner, to get rid of all the cookies etc, and left over bits.... it also has a Registry Cleaner, which I use about once a month.... have only good things to say about it so far  5 years on

[#3]

ccleaner is also what i use as my house wife for the pc 

[#4]

Thanks for the recommendation, tried it and so far nothing adverse has happened beyond having to log in to some sites due to losing the cookie. It seems to have fixed a problem deleting files so I think its removed a broken shell-extension.
My only concern is that given a registry entry that appears to contain no data it seems to progressively strip away one level at a time each time its used. Assuming that an empty container serves no purpose this is probably fine.

[#5]

I used CCleaner and lost my stored URLs but then found I could unclick a box to stop them being deleted next time round.  Shutter is there any problem in using CCleaner, can it cause any problems?

[#6]

Registry cleaning is very real,ive tried the free cc cleaner but then decided to buy registry cleaner from uniblue and it does a fab job,also i highly recommend speed up pc 2009 from uniblue,made my pc boot up and shut down faster,i "DID"see an improvement and i can work on my pc much better,also got the driverscanner from uniblue and that has saved my bacon a few times now,check it out,its free to try it "BUT" costs to fix all probs,im covered for a year and after that years up i may purchase it again.
Of course you can do all these tweaks and cleanings etc yourself if your a dab hand at it,I most certainly am not,heres a link to there site if your interested   http://www1.uniblue.com/products/campaigns/ppc/ub/google/uk/?s_kwcid=uniblue|

[#7]

you only have to use the registery cleaner part of ccleaner to clean the regiestry. and if you want to clean browsers and other programs you can pick and choice what ccleaner does.
you will find you need to do a few cleans before it picks every thing up

[#8]

What do the IT professionals here recommend - what do they do to the hundreds of company PC's ?

[#9]

As I said in my original post, I have had no problems using CCleaner for the past 5 years..... as others have said, you can set what you want to clean up, and the reg cleaner needs a couple or three passes on original install to get (nearly) all the bits left over..... I also use Eusing Registry Cleaner,(Also FREE ) once a month, after using CCleaner Reg cleaner, as this will find some things that CCleaner does not....  I use the CCleaner at the end of every day, just before I switch off the computer)  ...which does clear all the cookies, but then that is how I like it....

[#10]

Quote from: mal0z

What do the IT professionals here recommend - what do they do to the hundreds of company PC's ?

Personally...nothing until it breaks.
I only manage 25 client PCs but don't have the time to go round them all doing a 'spring clean'.

[#11]

Same here we don't actively spring clean any PC, but that is also a bit different to the home pc in that there are strict rules governing what normal users can / can't install.

[#12]

Quote from: mal0z

What do the IT professionals here recommend - what do they do to the hundreds of company PC's ?

Same as Adiewoo and Stat.  I only look after three sites and around 55 PC's but the average user (99.9%) is locked out from doing most things like adding programs, access to Control Panel etc.  A spring clean is usually done when I have to sit in front of a given PC for something that cannot be done remotely or there is a Major change in application software.  CCleaner is certainly part of the Toolbox.

[#13]

Good info from the professionals, thanks guys.  I have CCleaner on my desktop at home and use it occasionally but don't have it on my laptop.  Must get round to installing it. 

[#14]

Precisely as Adie says.
The users cannot do anything to their machine to fill it with junk in the same way that many of us do with our home machines (myself included), so the requirement for cleaning is pretty minimal (plus PC specs these days are often significantly higher than users actually need, so they don't notice real performance issues like they may have with older kit)
Mine gets a dust down with CCleaner every now and then, and CCleaner also accompanies me to many machines if I have cause to actually sit in front of one of them.
Generally I prefer to conform to type and do everything remotely though - if nothing else it freaks out the users that you have so much control, even from a distance.

[#15]

Thanks for the info guys - interesting.
yes of course when I had laptops in large companies - the machine was indeed tied down quite a lot, and no installing programs allowed etc. and updates remotely downloaded across the network.
But what they also did - was to have a Standard PC image with Windows, MS Office plus a few other programs, removed things like all the games and similar things  etc - and if a PC had any problems - the user data was backed up, the hard disc wiped and a fresh image installed - but I suspect this only applicable to the larger companies ? .
I have recently installed CCleaner - and it certainly seemed to speed things up - especially after I did a defrag after cleaning with CCleaner.