Reg Organizer

Reg Organizer
By:Frank Fahey
My original experience with a program to maintain the registry (the first OS that had a registry was
W indows 95)was a program called RegCln.It was from Microsoft and unsupported. Ihave found a
couple ofother ones since that time,but was always leery oftheir effectiveness. The current one Iwas
using was Reg Cleaner 4.3 by Jouni Vuorio.It is not only free but it is quite good. W henever Iwould
uninstall a program,Iwould use Reg Cleaner to verify that nothing was still in the registry and ifit was I
would remove it with Reg Cleaner. However,in some cases Iwould experience something that indicated
to me it was still there. Iwould then use regedit and use the Find command in the Edit menu and would
discover asmany as 30 to 40 finds associated with the program’
s name.
That brings us to this program Reg Organizer which was offered to me for review by Helen Huffof
http://www.chemtable.com/. This program is the most complete that Ihave ever seen and,at this point
in time,does more than Iam sure Ican use. But Ihave tested some ofits components and none have
yet caused me any problems and it appears to have done a complete j
ob ofcleaning/fixing the particular
task.
Before getting into the features ofthis program,it is time to talk about the use ofa program ofthis nature.
The registry is in control of all that goes on in the Operating System and the installed programs.
You should never change anything in the Registry unless you can correct the change. The easiest
way to back up the total Registry is to go to Start->Run and type in regedit. W hen it opens you should
see My Computer highlighted and under My Computer you should see 5 HKEY_ entries. Click on the
File menu and then Export. Up will come a dialog box with an opportunity to enter a name and where
you wish to put the file. Irecommend putting it on the Desktop and naming it something like reg03125.
That will create a file on the Desktop named reg03125.reg. The first time Idiscovered this approach was
in the W in 95 or 98 time period. At that time,it created a file ofabout 5 MB. However,my current W in
XP creates a file in the 75 MB range. Should you have a problem with any changes,double clicking that
file will allow you back to where you were prior to your changes. Irecommend keeping that file for about
a week in case problems occur a few days after any changes. You can also create a restore point in W in
ME and XP or a backup ofthe system files using the Backup program in all versionsofwindows.
The main reason Iuse a registry cleaner program is to remove all the clutter that is created and not
removed during an uninstall ofalmost every program. Even without uninstalling,some programs create
items that are repeats ofsimilar data already in the registry. There are six modes that the program can
start and it will start in the one used last during the previous session. Iprefer opening in the Registry
Cleanup Mode.
In this screen shot,to the right ofthe
File Editing Icon you will see a toolbar
with Advanced followed by three
items. They are Registry Cleanup,
Advance Cleanup and Shell Options.
This is where Ibegan and clicked on
Registry Cleanup.
I used all the default options, what to find, the registry
keys to check (all five were selected) and the advanced
options which used only the hard drives and shows
results when the scan is finished. Click on Start in the
upper left area. After the scan was completed, I had
about 200 entries in the Results the first time I used the
program. After looking at the items, I elected to
remove them all. When the items have been removed,
a dialog box comes up to tell you the items have been
backed up and where they are stored. I have done this
about five or six times and never had a problem occur.
I should tell you I have two operating systems on my
computer and it does both but I still get over a hundred
entries every time I do this. After a while, I do go in
and delete all the backup items which are saved in
D:\Program
computer.
Files\Reg
Organizer\backups
on
my
Next on this toolbar is Advanced Cleanup and
I clicked on Scan for this cleanup, again using
all the default settings.
Note that most of the file types that are in the
scan are those that you would probably want
removed. Again, some 50 to 100 files are
found. If you remove all of them, another
scan will find that all were not removed or their
programs quickly replaced them. When
Windows is running it creates some temporary
files and that is why you need to shut down
windows properly so that windows can remove those files. In the later versions of Windows, they are
replaced. The others are generally systems files or part of one of your programs and should not be a
problem. It does get rid of those that should be removed. The last item on this toolbar is Shell Options.
There are two tabs, Built in and tweak.dll that give you some options. I would recommend leaving this
section alone unless you would like to try some of the items, but be careful in your selection. You always
can go back to change what you have done.
The next major area is the Tab Selections.
You can click on them in the left column or the actual tab
running across the top of the section. What is offered in
this area along with what I have described already makes
this program worth buying. There are 11 tabs and the first
is an uninstall menu of all your programs. This is more
detailed than the Add/Remove in the control panel, plus
sometimes you can not find a program in the Add/Remove
area that is still installed. The next tab is Software and lists
all the programs still installed and listed in the registry. If
there is a program there that you know is no longer on the
computer, you can remove the keys still in the registry.
Right click on the software and select Show the registry
keys of _ _ _ _. You then can remove them. There are many ways that you can remove a program
improperly and have information still in the registry which can cause problems. The Startup Processes
list the programs that automatically start with your computer. This is an area that I find most users have a
problem with affecting how their computer runs. Many programs when installed create startup programs
which are not needed and, in fact, deteriorate your computers performance. There is a program in all
versions of Windows except 95 and 2000 that can do the same thing, but all these tools are here in one
place and easy to use. The other tabs are: Files Types, Shell Extensions, New File Menu, Open with
Menu, Shell Folders, Shared DLL, ARP Cache and Application Paths.
There is one mode left that I would like to comment on. That is the Search and Replace mode.
This gives you an opportunity to select something
you would like to remove from the registry, such
as a file at start up that halts your computer and
the message is it can not be found. This happens
in a bad removal of a program and all you need to
do is use the Search and Replace and type in the
file name and select without a replacement to
remove that problem. Another example of how
this could be used is the experience I have had
with Norton Antivirus.
After uninstalling the
program I have found as many as 50 places in
the registry where the words Norton Antivirus are
in the registry. I would open the registry, click on
My Computer and then the Edit menu and finally
type Norton Antivirus in the Find command. Each
time I found the name, I would delete it and then push F3 to find the next. It would take easily 30 to 45
minutes to remove them all.
As I indicated at the beginning, there are many things to do with this program and I have not covered
them all but there is also a very clean help menu to take you through the steps on the program’s features
and how to use them.
Although I am careful not to do something that I can not recover from, I never had a problem with
this program. Considering the type of program we are talking about, that says volumes.
A single license sell for $29.95 and you can find more information at
http://www.chemtable.com/register.htm.
Help Needed -- Volunteers in Medicine (VIM) needs
volunteers to scan patient'
s records into the computer
database. Training will be provided.
If you can spare some time to help this great local
organization, please call Henry, Volunteer Coordinator, at
681-6612 x238 or Jean Guillen at 298-1638. Identify
yourself as a computer club member.