[The E]

As I wrote on my second paragraph on my previous post, it's a marginal improvement, and left instructions how to do the testing. Don't have any stats as I the information I collected from my testing was only for me, nobody cared for it anyway. Probably you never took time to make any measurements or to make maintenance to hundreds of PCs over years for a living, well for you it doesn't matter, probably you're the average user/gamer and you're fine with your zero Registry maintenance  and mediocre Windows Defragmentation, and yeah you haven't measure the Registry usage and it's access, and you really don't care about it and yeah the gain is minimum but you shouldn't say at all since you haven't even made the testing, and is there, little but it does exist, so affirming it's not at all impacting performance is incorrect, and BTW performance on a PC is build like this, a piece at the time at some point. Yes I have read those articles, they have truths, half-truths and jumping to conclusions too, just like you're doing it here. Just do that 1 testing, install a Backgroound Registry Monitoring access app,just to count the accesses and the amount of data modified

dude, I'm a developer of Windows applications. It is, quite literally, my job to know these things and to read the documentation MS produces for Windows to understand what the best practices are and why they are that way.

I actually did run the numbers. In a ~30 minute trace, ProcMon captured something like 6.7 million registry events, using up 38.2 seconds of processing time in total. An average registry event, therefore, takes about 5 microseconds to resolve. If I apply CCleaner, how does that number change, and how far does it have to change in order to register as a noticeable improvement to the user? I would posit that even cutting that time in half wouldn't be noticeable.

As for the desfragmentation, Windows file defragmentation measured by PerfectDisk and other defrasggers analysis after the fact show file is mostly good, but the way it moves the files is inefficient and a few files are not defragmented properly or at all, like folders, and system files are never optimized, Perfect Disk solves all these problems with a normal defragmentation, except the system files, moves all folders to a single location, that are defragged on offline boot mode, for a privileged disk access, and prevent a lot of Windows simple and inefficient disk write, and has a background defragmentation, but if you want to accumulate small inefficiencies and say it doesn't matter OK, it's your time

You do know that the Windows defragger has information about file usage that other defraggers do not have, and is optimized to put frequently accessed files on the fastest part of the disk, not to replicate the logical layout of files into the physical layout as those other defraggers do?

[technopredator]

Yes E, I suspected you were a professional developer as you're part of the SCP and I know very little of programming and realize that the original FS game was very complex and the improvements are as such or more, so you need professionals IMO to manage that development level. Anyway stats and needs/wants are the way to go as I wrote before depending on what you're OK with: according to your stats: 38.2s is 2.12%of 30 mins, and the 5.7 μs average, was that from boot time? or you just activated ProcMon at a time after boot? anyway I want -1% of time usage if I can help it, you don't, it's everyone choosing of their  time and performance limits, as wrote before, I run Rosetta@Home and play Planetside 2 and my hardware is far from the latest my components are at least 7 years old and I want to extract the maximum performance and has always been my goal to do so with any PC I make maintenance.

Also the Registry carry errors even on a new Windows installations, that shouldn't happen IMO, not in digital computing environments, they can be avoided and they can cause malfunctioning, but there they are, so that's another reason to clean the Registry. The way a Registry path is searched in by branch hierarchy, so why have to search on useless/unnecessary data when can be cleaned off? For me that's not OK, it's a principle for me, therefore not acceptable if I can help it.

Security: As you might know from the articles you pointed out Piriform is owned by Avast!, Avast! being 1 of the top PC security software worldwide, really high detection and definition update updates, offers full PC security for free, asking you pay for it to support them and if you need assistance from them, pretty sure they won't make this mistake again, and I suspect they were tracking the computer physical location and making counter stealth hacking so they needed to leave the infection for a month or so I think. CCleaner is the least invasiv and more secure cleaner I have tried, I tried like 7 of them, I currently use 3 of them, AVG Performance and IObit Advance System Care, and they overlap mostly but CCleaner tends to be subset of the cleaning set the other 2 use, so it's the safest option of all, you'll hardly lose any, if at all, functionality with CClaner, so not really a risk and you can roll back everything,not really a security risk.

Defrag: you mean this info? NTFS file system journaling yeah yet it fails, to do an excellent job, for files Windows defragments really good and yet PerfectDisk does it the same, and goes beyond that with access to USN Journal and Prefetcher and maybe even the NTFS file system journaling because PerfectDisk runs on a MSC (Microsoft System Console) Window and Wikipedia  mentions an API, so maybe that's why does it better, and I know it is so, I have tested both of them, at least twice, I have no complaints from Perfect disk specially because Windows Defrag doesn't do this on the background.

That you're a professional developer doesn't invalidate any of what I have posted about the Registry and defragmentation dude, my data and experience confirms it. To be fair, I have to admit I have screwed my Registry a couple of times making Windows unbootable, by using those 3 Registry cleaners twice or thrice in different occasions, that's why I only install CCleaner and AVG Performance, IObit is Chinese, nothing is made without  oppressive CHinese Gov. permission, and apparently China was behind that attack, and IOBit cleaning is the most intrusive of all, an no problems since then, so I might be right

[The E]

Yes E, I suspected you were a professional developer as you're part of the SCP and I know very little of programming and realize that the original FS game was very complex and the improvements are as such or more, so you need professionals IMO to manage that development level. Anyway stats and needs/wants are the way to go as I wrote before depending on what you're OK with: according to your stats: 38.2s is 2.12%of 30 mins, and the 5.7 μs average, was that from boot time? or you just activated ProcMon at a time after boot? anyway I want -1% of time usage if I can help it, you don't, it's everyone choosing of their  time and performance limits, as wrote before, I run Rosetta@Home and play Planetside 2 and my hardware is far from the latest my components are at least 7 years old and I want to extract the maximum performance and has always been my goal to do so with any PC I make maintenance.

Then move Windows to an SSD. You can get much, much more of a performance upgrade by doing that than by doing literally anything else. You think the 2% of time the PC spent in doing registry things worth optimizing? Then optimizing the much, much higher portion of time it spends doing disc IO is even more important.

Yes, I do not care for those 2%. Why? Because I have an SSD. My motherboard takes longer to POST than Windows does to boot.

Also the Registry carry errors even on a new Windows installations, that shouldn't happen IMO, not in digital computing environments, they can be avoided and they can cause malfunctioning, but there they are, so that's another reason to clean the Registry. The way a Registry path is searched in by branch hierarchy, so why have to search on useless/unnecessary data when can be cleaned off? For me that's not OK, it's a principle for me, therefore not acceptable if I can help it.

And the fact that a registry cleaner finds "issues" on a fresh install doesn't make you curious as to why that is? Do you seriously think that the people making CCleaner et al know more about the registry than MS does? When they've proven in the past that they really, really don't?

Security: As you might know from the articles you pointed out Piriform is owned by Avast!, Avast! being 1 of the top PC security software worldwide, really high detection and definition update updates, offers full PC security for free, asking you pay for it to support them and if you need assistance from them, pretty sure they won't make this mistake again, and I suspect they were tracking the computer physical location and making counter stealth hacking so they needed to leave the infection for a month or so I think. CCleaner is the least invasiv and more secure cleaner I have tried, I tried like 7 of them, I currently use 3 of them, AVG Performance and IObit Advance System Care, and they overlap mostly but CCleaner tends to be subset of the cleaning set the other 2 use, so it's the safest option of all, you'll hardly lose any, if at all, functionality with CClaner, so not really a risk and you can roll back everything,not really a security risk.

So you're losing more performance by doing superfluous AV checking than you do by not optimizing the registry. Good to know.
Also, if Avast is so good at security, how did Piriform's software release channels get compromised so hard?

That you're a professional developer doesn't invalidate any of what I have posted about the Registry and defragmentation dude, my data and experience confirms it. To be fair, I have to admit I have screwed my Registry a couple of times making Windows unbootable, by using those 3 Registry cleaners twice or thrice in different occasions, that's why I only install CCleaner and AVG Performance, IObit is Chinese, nothing is made without  oppressive CHinese Gov. permission, and apparently China was behind that attack, and IOBit cleaning is the most intrusive of all, an no problems since then, so I might be right

I also once screwed up my system by using a registry cleaner. So I stopped using registry cleaners. Haven't had a registry corruption issue since.

[technopredator]

Regardless of the mass storage type, the Registry has errors, things connected to nothing, wrong configurations and so on, things that shouldn't be there, you assume those errors are still good because Microsoft did it and let them there, argument from authority, an error is an error, junk is junk, no matter who put it there, it shouldn't be for stability and functionality reasons, they slow the system? the more reason for them not to be there, IMO, they're classified as error for a reason, have you ever thought Microsoft maybe doesn't care to fix those errors for a reason? because there are registry cleaners? I have spoken to Microsoft support and they rely on external software for example to retrieve deleted Outlook messages when they have been purged from the Trash bin.

They wouldn't be doing the Registry cleaning if they didn't know about it, of course they do, you're jumping to conclusions, some know more than others

What superfluous AV checking are you talking about? and why is that relevant? you mean the AV real-time scanner? Oh I have it disabled of course, I don't use them if I'm not checking anything unknown, so you'd be wrong assuming that out of ignorance, don't go there dude, it's always bad. About the hacking, well that's something you'd have to ask to Avast! <- BTW that's how the product is named, with the exclamation mark, I'm not angry hahaha, at least it was originally, maybe I shouldn't use it that way, hmm...

Which cleaner you used to screw your Registry? was it CCleaner? I have using Registry cleaners for 2 decades, and only managed to screw my Registry twice, they're pretty safe, and the bad ones are identified already, like RegCure, guaranteed will screw up your Registry specially in WinXP where you can delete even system keys, since Win 7/Vista have protected sections. Also never made more than 1 pass on a client's PC, but users manage to screw their own Windows installation on their own, and the experiments always done on my PC first and used extensively. BTW here is what I CCleaned recently on my clean Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit installation, I have checked it out and everything seems valid, why don't you check it out and tell me if something shouldn't be deleted proving Piriform and me wrong?

Registry backup 1
Rebooted and then re-scanned
Registry backup 2

[666maslo666]

Registry cleaning is dubious at best but is not even the main purpose of CCleaner. CCleaner is mainly used to delete temporary files, histories, logs and so on. With CCEnhancer addon it supports cleaning junk from over 1000 programs, not just to speed up the computer but mainly for privacy reasons and to recover space.

https://singularlabs.com/software/ccenhancer/

I use it regularly for many years and never had an issue. Benefits are debatable but it is not "actual malware".

[The E]

Regardless of the mass storage type, the Registry has errors, things connected to nothing, wrong configurations and so on, things that shouldn't be there, you assume those errors are still good because Microsoft did it and let them there, argument from authority, an error is an error, junk is junk, no mother who put it there, it shouldn't be for stability and functionality reasons, they slow the system? the more reason for them not to be there, IMO, they're classified as error for a reason, have you ever thought Microsoft maybe doesn't care to fix those errors for a reason? because there are registry cleaners? I have spoken to Microsoft support and they rely on external software for example to retrieve deleted Outlook messages when they have been purged from the Trash bin.

They're classified as errors for a reason, yes. The reason is that CCleaner needs to show you that it's doing something, that there is a benefit to what it does. Even if there isn't.

Anyway, I'm done talking to you about this. You want to prove me wrong? Then show me the benchmarks. Show me the difference these things make using hard numbers.

Here's a benchmark I found:

[technopredator]

Well I never wanted to prove you wrong, as I wrote it's up to each person and their preferences. Well I gave you the evidence for you to prove Priiform and me wrong, you wrote you read a lot of Microsoft technical things, so the .reg files I posted shouldn't be a problem for you and yet you won't said if they're right or wrong, and again you're assuming out of ignorance CCleaner did nothing and simulated the cleaning, when I have presented you with the backups of the 2 pass CCleaning.

Well that's a  "Feb 28, 2013 3:01 AM PT" review, 4 years 8 months old, and as you can see yourself, registry cleaners make performance improvements, why should I make another? wasn't that proving you wrong? it's not clear to me. You're done talking to me about this? well I guess is good-bye for now then

[technopredator]

Registry cleaning is dubious at best but is not even the main purpose of CCleaner. CCleaner is mainly used to delete temporary files, histories, logs and so on. With CCEnhancer addon it supports cleaning junk from over 1000 programs, not just to speed up the computer but mainly for privacy reasons and to recover space.

https://singularlabs.com/software/ccenhancer/

I use it regularly for many years and never had an issue. Benefits are debatable but it is not "actual malware".

So you use dubious at best software regularly? I wouldn't, I trust what they do because they work consistently over time, that's why I trusted and don't think they're dubious,because for that matter everything outside Windows is dubious, and in general we can't control the algorithms and functioning of apps so everything is partially dubious, depends on the scope you refer to

[Grizzly]

Well that's a  "Feb 28, 2013 3:01 AM PT" review, 4 years 8 months old, and as you can see yourself, registry cleaners make performance improvements,

Take a look at that table again, with the exception of Ashampoo, the registery cleaners used actually *lower* performance, albeit at such an insignificant rate that it can be chalked up to statistical variance. The only program that makes a noticable difference (And that's in boot times only), Ashampoo, does so by, err, shutting down the touchscreen. To take The E's article's text:

[The] utilities worked well enough, but they didn’t have a meaningful impact on performance. In fact, according to PCMark 7 system performance went down ever so slightly after running SlimCleaner, CCleaner, and PC Booster, though boot time was improved somewhat with Ashampoo WinOptimizer. Presumably, that's because in addition to cleaning up junk files it shut down a few services running in the background. In terms of recovered disk space, CCleaner was able to purge slightly more junk data from the system, but the differences between the apps were negligible. I compiled the results below so you can see for yourself.

Two of the tools, namely PC Booster and Ashampoo WinOptimizer, had a couple of unwanted consequences as well. Ashampoo WinOptimizer disabled the Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service, which really should have remained enabled on a multitouch-capable test system. And PC Booster set up a scheduled task that caused the application to pop-up onscreen asking users to register and buy the full version. That’s just gross, and unforgivable in my book.

[technopredator]

That's the thing is not a Register cleaning comparison only and it can't be said what boosted what exactly,
Other considerations:
- It's a Sony VAIO, a nightmare to maintain, and if you try to reinstall Windows from a standard Windows installer you're in deep trouble, for me it's the worst mobile PC ever made, it has special requirements that had to be done exactly, and maybe things will work, a huge list of inconveniences other brands don't even have, anyway first mistake, like a bad girlfriend, beautiful outside and a ****ing ***** inside.
- It's a never maintained PC and amobile one: everything on C:, fragmented the crap out, and lot of bloatware and unnecessary apps.
- I create partitions for Temp, PageFile, on a second HDD and User Docs and Any other data, on the primary HDD, if only 1 HDD, like in this case, the second data partition  can't be created, but with this distinction, like Free BSD does at install time, much of the fragmentation by temp files is lowered on C: significantly, having the PageFile.sys on a single partition prevents its fragmentation and inducing fragmentation on C:, this optimization by partition wasn't made here.
- Uninstalling of apps would have helped and at least a Windows Defrag.
- This was almost 5 years ago, Windows 8.1 is a highly optimized version of Windows 8, and has a Metro Start Menu, but hey at least it has one.
- I have used my current PC extensively for about 6 years with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and then Switched to Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, with the same hardware, 8.1 was easily 2x the speed of 7, no contest needed, consistent with what a ex Microsoft engineers said so, he was in charge of apps and driver performance and stability testing, he designed the tests, on YouTube, Bernacles Nerdgasm or similar, he now monetize on YouTube for a living, so depends on which PC you test it, yeah, sometimes is imperceptible and in a hurry I would skip the Registry cleaners and even the defragmentation, but if I can do my work properly I will include them for sure

So of course any PC cleaning would be hindered a lot by the extremely crappy VAIO environment, in a environment, as I would create by optimizong that or any PC would be more clear the Registry cleaning environment, but right now I can't do it, I have lots of things to do, I come here to chillax not to get even more work and testing. Maybe someday.

I have discarded some of them because they stopped working or being developed on any Windows after Windows XP, and some where crappy apps  not worth using them, it's kinds of risky yes, but I tend to test them and use them and offer review in forums if I have the time. Anyway, yes I know it's controversial and sometimes adverse but if you look at the reasons besides performance I think they're valid to risk it, at least IMO.

PS: E mentioned that Windows made a copy of often used Registry parts in the Registry itself for faster access, begs the question: why, if it's so efficient?

[666maslo666]

So you use dubious at best software regularly? I wouldn't, I trust what they do because they work consistently over time, that's why I trusted and don't think they're dubious,because for that matter everything outside Windows is dubious, and in general we can't control the algorithms and functioning of apps so everything is partially dubious, depends on the scope you refer to

I use it to delete junk files, histories, and it works really well for that, especially enhanced with CCEnhancer. I dont regularly use the clean registry function, which is what I called dubious. But I used it occasionally and it never screwed anything up either..

[technopredator]

So you think 1 part of the app would be well coded and the other would be crappy coded? Tends to not be the case

[The E]

Well, you think the same is true of Windows...

[technopredator]

Really? How so?why you play mysterious? if you have something to say, say it

[jr2]

You know, this might all boil down to choice of software running on a system.  If you're always cleaning up after someone installing junk (or you're always testing things out, realizing they're not that great or just not right for you) and uninstalling them, you're probably going to end up with a lot of stuff that needs cleaning, vs someone like The E probably has a set of tools he always uses, knows they're solid, and won't let anything else touch his system outside of, say, SandboxIE or a VM, until he's certain they're not a bunch of script kiddies trying their hand at programming for the first time.

This also explains the benchmarks.  If you're not cleaning up junk, you won't notice the benefits. 

Speaking from personal experience, I noticed a great deal of a difference on people's computers.  Might have something to do with literally thousands of orphaned entries I usually found.  Use case makes the difference.  We're talking tech-illiterate folks who hand you their machine to clean up and literally the first half hour to an hour is spent uninstalling junk that has no business being there (toolbars, 6 different video chat programs that they have no idea what they are or what they do, etc etc, basically, people who never "uncheck" anything, but are just 'smart' enough to search, and download and install stuff all day long - can you say 13 different variants of "Driver Booster XD 3.8++ ProPremium Free Ultra HD Edition"??).

[technopredator]

Your eloquence has put in perspective what I couldn't do with so many words. Well I ever find a severe case like that, I prefer to format and reinstall Windows after saving user's data, in my experience downloaders and other unwanted software remains being annoying or installing stuff, I learned the hard wasting hours dealing with the uninstall and then searching for virus and then cleaning and optimizing is in the end worthless

[jr2]

Your eloquence has put in perspective what I couldn't do with so many words. Well I ever find a severe case like that, I prefer to format and reinstall Windows after saving user's data, in my experience downloaders and other unwanted software remains being annoying or installing stuff, I learned the hard wasting hours dealing with the uninstall and then searching for virus and then cleaning and optimizing is in the end worthless

That would be great if anyone ever kept their reinstall disks.   Also, realizing the factory restore partition has a bug (a bug, not a bad sector, chkdsk came back clean) halfway through restoring is... painful.  Mind you these things (back in 2007-2011 ish) are sporting 256-512MB RAM and the XP SP1 included needed to be updated to XP SP2/3 + all current updates and current drivers, so this all took eons.  E-O-N-S -- If I could convince them to upgrade to 2GB of RAM for $100, I'd do that first, which made it like 3x faster (or more!).

Also, I wouldn't rely solely on CCLeaner and the like, I'd run an offline (LiveCD) virus scan, then an online virus scan with an up-to-date virus scanner, then run Malwarebytes, then let CCleaner pick up the rest.  You're right though, the safest way is to factory reinstall, it just used to be a major pain in the arse.  After completion, manual defrag.

[technopredator]

Yeah, oh those times, slow PCs, HDDs and long hours. I mostly put the user HDD on my PC and made an offline virus scan, I don't like to use optical drives, they should be something reliable but they're like tapes, get screwed by usage the moment your think they're solid, they have potential, but in order to make the media cheap they go to an extreme, or they'll do it reliable and then charge a **** load of money for them, corporations, committed to be assholes to the user.And yes, Win Xp won't be happy unless you put 768 MB RAM. Yeah I'd do the online virus check too and then the rest, it was a PIA, it¡s a long process and the user never seem to realize is a PIA, they always ask how long like they'd do it themselves.

[Mito [PL]]

I'd say that most you can "optimise" is just removing all the unneeded crap running in the background, and usually Task Manager and msconfig.exe are quite fine to do that. And quite some trusted software these days comes with some background processes that shouldn't be there, I suppose.

And I need to clean that up too, it's annoying when you install Office to use it one goddamn time and it leaves you with OfficeClickToRun.exe running all the time that you can't kill with task manager. Boo.