Registry Cleaning

[Smitty]

None of the registry tools I have seem to reconcile old and unused program keys.
I believe questions similar to this have been asked before but none seem to focus where I am having difficulty.
I no longer have Norton Utilities on my machine.
I no longer have Quicktime on my machine.
I no longer have Real Player on my machine.
All programs were uninstalled using "their" respective Uninstallers.
Using a registry editor, I find <font color=red>(10)</font color=red> references to Norton.
Using a registry editor, I find <font color=red>(47)</font color=red> references to Quicktime.
Using a registry editor, I find <font color=red>(93)</font color=red> references to Real Player
Some are Keys.
Some are values.
Some are data.
I assume some of the references will be used by other software to recognize Quicktime/Real/Norton Files and/or File extensions.
In addition are extra references to Real's companion programs "Spinner" and "Jukebox" which were also removed by uninstallers provided by Real.

In addition to the above and to save repetition I find (49) references to a program another user had installed on this machine, "BonziBuddy but which has long been gone. Another example is an large number of references to IE 4.0 which to my knowledge has never been installed on this machine.

In short what rule of thumb should be used when attempting to delete this type of clutter? I realize I can probably leave it alone but that seems like a "kludge" and eventually such action would leave a rather larger and cluttered registry wouldn't it?

Many Thanks in advance

Smitty

[reghakr]

Norton Utilities, probably not.

The others, maybe. It's difficult to answer that because Windows itself has Real Player in Add/Remove programs under Windows setup. But if there are references to real palyer 8 (for example) those could be safely deleted.

LEAVE all IE4 references!

Delete all references to Bonzai Buddy.

I'd export the keys and delete a few at a time. Shutdown and restart in between and see if all is OK.

[Smitty]

Thanks reghakr..

I have been trying to get rid of IE 4.0...glad to know I shouldn't
"Bonzi" Buddy..Spelling is incorrect but that's how they had it is gone.


BTW

There is a thread either on this forum or under General regarding hidden files.
Have you had the opportunity to view this site.............!
See Private Mail<font color=red>!!!!</font color=red>
The reason I mention it becauae whenever I defragment I usually watch the details while I have a smoke. Noticed the unusually large sections of my drive that are labelled unmovable. I know they are not non-relocatable code so I was going to ask on the forum. After reading the article at the site I will wait and try their hints, then defragment, watch details, and see if unmovable blocks are gone.

CYL

Smitty

<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Smitty on 09/01/01 14:26.</FONT></P>

[desperado99]

"Norton Utilities, probably not. "

why not?

[reghakr]

Because it's never mentioned anywhere in a standard Windows install.

reghakr

[RWSchlatter]

"...None of the registry tools I have seem to reconcile old and unused program keys..."
The probable reason to this is that MS never (and probably will never) make any statement about how these keys are to be used.

There is only a recommendation that softwarehouses and authors in HKLM and HKCU use the \Software\&lt;company&gt;\&lt;application&gt; structure for storage, so that there are no key or valuename clashes.
Of course the registration of COM objects has also to follow some rule, but nowadays this is usually done with Regsvr32.exit. If you drop an application manually (not with the de-install routine), you would actually have to followup on each module (dll) and de-register it with this tool to have done things properly.

On the other hand a set of keys has been defined to cooperate, especially in the area of components (COM+ etc). Microsofts RegClean used some knowledge about these keys to remove unused entries or drop entries with lost links (actually RegClean has been removed from the MS download site since a couple of months, what means it's no more reliable).

No registry cleaning program can predict how an author will use this subtree, nor can guess any dependancies of data that may be shared between, so that means don't touch (or would you like to pay up for any data lost ?).

As far as a registry tool can go is to analyze the data portion and find out if it detects a path name, and can try and find out if this path name exists on your system. The same is for any other string that ends in one of the executable file extensions: check the file system and see if you can find such a file.
So the hard work of detecting and searching can be automated, but the decision to delete must be left to the owner of the machine -&gt; you.

Personally J am not too concerned about some rubbish in my registry (but J am neither a big downloader and evaluater of freeware / shareware so this won't hurt me).

______________
Regards - Richard

[Smitty]

..."Of course the registration of COM objects has also to follow some rule, but nowadays this is usually done with Regsvr32.exit. If you drop an application manually (not with the de-install routine), you would actually have to followup on each module (dll) and de-register it with this tool to have done things properly..."
Where can I read about this? All the programs I mentioned were uninstalled using their tools. As far as manually cleaning up the rubbish in mine I haven't even started. My main concern is whether or not I am removing a "3rd party slot" that Microsoft left for future developer's. The few entries I mentioned irritate me because they are removed by some registry cleaners only to appear after next boot. Quite frankly I now have at least (10) seperate registry tools from Regmaid up to RegMedic and they all fail to clean out the garbage I posted and I think you responded to. I appreciate all input however and think "remove a few, see what happens, remove a few, see......" is the best I can do.

All ways a pleasure

CYL

Smitty

[RWSchlatter]

"...As far as manually cleaning up the rubbish..."
One problem with shared objects (such as COM): they have a usage counter in the registry, if the counter never gets to zero for some reason (eg bad deinstall script, or application just purged from Windows Explorer w/o deinstall), the object is considered in use and will never get removed. You then have both garbage in the registry and possibly in the Common Programs folder or Windows system directory (J dare look in some of mine). You will have hardly a chance to trace these remains.


Some reading:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q207/1/32.ASP (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q249/8/73.ASP>http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q249/8/73.ASP</a>
<a)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/apctest/htm/utilities_11.asp (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q259/0/12.ASP>http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q259/0/12.ASP</a>
<a)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/oledb/htm/oledbpwk_fullreg.asp (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/oledb/htm/oledbpwk_noospreg.asp>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/oledb/htm/oledbpwk_noospreg.asp</a>
<a)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/script56/html/leteleregistration.asp (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/oledb/htm/oledbpwk_noospreg.asp>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/oledb/htm/oledbpwk_noospreg.asp</a>
<a)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dninvbs/html/ch7finalizingactivexcomponent.asp (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vjcore98/html/vjctlregisteringcontrol.asp>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vjcore98/html/vjctlregisteringcontrol.asp</a>
<a)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/security/hh/crypto/usingcrypto_7rsp.asp (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/indexsrv/hh/indexsrv/ixufilt_9v1v.asp>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/indexsrv/hh/indexsrv/ixufilt_9v1v.asp</a>
<a)

______________
Regards - Richard

[report_2]

http://www.easytweak.com/download.htm

You can download the Tweaking Guide. In it you will find what can be done, step by step, to clean the registry using several registry cleaning programs rather than one.

Personally, I leave the junk.

[Smitty]

Thanks for reply

Considering all reading reghakr and Richard have supplied me with it might be while till I have a chance but I have downloaded it and in time will learn its secrets.

Regards



Smitty

[henryg]

Smitty, try a utility called NBG Clean Registry. It worked for me.

[Smitty]

Thanks, Henry

I'll give it a look when I get a chance.



Smitty