registry cleaners

[Bucky]

I have been losing a lot of files and I think this may be the problem. I do not use this anymore!

 

http://library.techguy.org/wiki/Registry_Cleaners

[Alan_B]

That seems unlikely.

 

Cleaning the registry too much has almost no effect on the number of files on your computer,

but it is likely to cripple the operation of the computer,

and only in extreme cases would I expect the computer to delete its files as a result of being crippled.

 

You should certainly notice your computer misbehaving long before you would notice the loss of files.

[Nergal]

on top of that ccleaner is a very gentle registry cleaner (still needs a fair amount of caution and finesse though as all registry cleaners do)

[Andavari]

When using aggressive registry cleaners you have to manually verify everything they want to remove. This is of course completely unrealistic for someone to do since most aggressive registry cleaners can list hundreds if not thousands of entries they deem as "invalid," however you have to realise anywhere from 50% to 99.99% of what most list are false positives that can/may/will damage the registry.

 

One software example that's targeted by far too many registry cleaners is Microsoft Office, and many registry cleaners will break it. But with Microsoft Office it will start to bark foul and demand a repair install when you go to use it afterwards. Programs that can request a repair install may survive to live another day, but Windows may not be so lucky