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I had been looking for a GOOD registry cleaner and I finally found one about 11 years ago... REGSEEKER!!
First time I ran it IT REMOVED OVER 800 KEYS!!!
Excellent program.........
Some anti-virus applications have the registry cleaner built into them and in some cases given a user-friendly name like "PC Tune-up", but I'm not sure if it'll remove all the registry entries related to the uninstalled applications, like the directories that were used by them and such. I guess that depends on which one you use. I'll look at Regseeker.
With MSI (Windows Installer) the uninstall script is part of the installer. Anything installed by the original script will be removed when the uninstaller runs. Where you get leftovers is when the application adds things that the original installed doesn't know about, or when shared system components are added that the uninstaller can't be sure aren't being used by another application.
For instance; we originally used Windows Installer technology in 2003 when we released the first version of our app. Building update installers became a huge hassle over the years (for us and our customers), as the overhead involved is quite large (Our total installed program package is about 50 MB, but the MSI for it was close to 200 MB).
A - Over time we wrote our own update tool (and eventually our own installer) that would download a 5-10 MB update from our server, copy the new files into place, and restart the services / applications. This changed our updates from a half hour (10 step) project, into a 2 minute (1 step) project, and made our clients much more likely to upgrade.
The problem with this is that any new files, registry changes, etc added in the update aren't removed if you uninstall through the control panel, since the original installation doesn't know about those newer files.
B: As for the registry, I have doubts that any serious amount of performance can be gained from cleaning it, and haven't run any tools or manually cleaned leftovers out of my registry since probably the early days of XP.
A: I had experience as a systems administrator (Windows and Unix/Linux) and I worked with one of my associates in IT with developing an application for the Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2012 platforms, that uninstalled software and it did a good job in cleaning the registries along with the related components on the servers' hard drives, which is something that's not addressed when using most uninstall utilities and Microsoft's "Disk Clean-up" utility.
B: That can depend on many variables; I went through and cleaned up the registry on one of my Windows 7 Ultimate computers that was taking a bit too long to start up and in some cases starting applications on it. After cleaning up the registry and the clutter left on the hard drive from applications that are no longer installed, the start-up time was reduced by 50% and applications started much faster.
Sad to say, Clara Bow is long dead, so I doubt she can help.
Microsoft has always used bloat and booger piles as a way of degrading performance over time and selling "faster" operating systems. Remember how long it took MS-DOS to load? Remember when you timed the load time of your OS "clean" and then came back a year later and timed it?
Selling newer and Faster operating systems.. I suspected that also. It doesn't take an IT professional to realize how much slower their Windows computer takes to start up after a while, compared to when it was new, which of course opens up a sector in the software market for improving systems performance. Microsoft and others know how to take advantage of those who are not too computer-literate.
Some anti-virus applications have the registry cleaner built into them and in some cases given a user-friendly name like "PC Tune-up", but I'm not sure if it'll remove all the registry entries related to the uninstalled applications, like the directories that were used by them and such. I guess that depends on which one you use. I'll look at Regseeker.
Ya its amazing how these programs are able to do this!!!!!
Regseeker has 2 entries.. GREEN and RED ... If red ones come up,its best to not just blindly say OK and remove it but GREEN ones are safe to remove....
I had been looking for a GOOD registry cleaner and I finally found one about 11 years ago... REGSEEKER!!
First time I ran it IT REMOVED OVER 800 KEYS!!!
Excellent program.........
RegSeeker is an oldie but a goodie. It was widely popular and used back in the Windows XP days but more than the reg cleaning, I liked some of the quick system tweaks it had within.
My favorite and seemingly safer registry cleaner for Windows XP and earlier versions was RegScrubXP.
It also had some really cool additional functions and tweaks too.
Regardless of what app you use, I am not going to say don't use one but make sure to create a registry backup BEFORE doing any cleaning! Both programs create backups by default but they typically backup only the parts they are modifying. It might be smart to use ERUNT or RegBak to backup the entire registry.
This is often a quicker and less destructive way to revert Windows to an earlier, presumably healthier state than using System Restore function. Also Windows System Restore points could get infected with certain pesky malware. These 3rd party registry backups were immune to that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skunk Workz
You can actually produce an .exe with most of the commercial .msi script builders. They simply wrap the .msi file (and any support files) in a self extracting .exe.
I used Windows Installer (MSI) as our primary installation method from '03 - '15, and only ever distributed .exe files.
Yep. Actually, I sometimes have to go the other way around to create SCCM update packages. For example, Java Runtime is available as an .exe but we need the .msi file which I normally wouldn't want because as you might already know, you can't even run an .msi using other credentials (run as...) but you can with an .exe file.
Anyhow, I start the Java.exe installer, (before completing the installation) then go to AppData\LocalNow\Oracle folder under the user profile to get the .msi file for it.
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I guess that depends on which one you use. I'll look at Regseeker.
It doesn't take an IT professional to realize how much slower their Windows computer takes to start up after a while, compared to when it was new, which of course opens up a sector in the software market for improving systems performance. Microsoft and others know how to take advantage of those who are not too computer-literate. 
