I wonder if this affects the mobile app too.
I own CCleaner Pro and i trust it. Been using it for years.
Maybe today as computers become multi-thread/-core aware, not much processing power is perceivable by the average user, but on Windows XP times where CPUs had only 1 core and at best 2 threads, it was, you could and I have measured the boot time in seconds and the saving was a few of them,
also general loading of programs, where they access the most the registry, and general usage of them and the PC in general, I was a PC tech on those times and still are and make at random times extensive use and measurements of some workloads on a user's PC before and after and there is a measurable difference maybe at technical level but there it is, also Windows uses the Registry to boot and access important system-related functioning, I recommend you activate a background Registry monitoring software so you realize how much it's really used, and yeah it's an archaic way to store application info but that's how Windows is structured, also you can deny access to the registry to an application at install time and probably won't work well if at all, Winnows without the Registry or when it's damaged enough won't boot.
Also the Registry is a string based access database, so an app searches in a hierarchical tree for the path it tries to access, so the number of strings a tree branch has affects CPU performance proportionally, until it's cached in RAM, at which point it'll be read and written on RAM for a later deferred disk write, you can observe this phenomenon in the cleaning software after a second scan to the Registry, this is the reason Disk Optimization software and even System Optimization software will defragment the Registry files so the slow HDD access be as little as possible. Denying this reality is simply intellectually dishonest, you will probably persist in your idea but that doesn't make it real
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
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
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.
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
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.
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".
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,
[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.
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
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