RegClean - gets stuck EVERY time I try and use it

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Deep Thought - 20 Apr 2004 20:25 GMT

Can anyone help out with an oddball here...

My trusty old Tosh Libretto sub-notebook runs Win95B (OSR2?) and I have had
years of relatively trouble-free operation. I only run a 2 Gig HDD and
always have at least 1Gig unused - i.e. not crammed with software... however
I felt a bit of house-keeping was due and having never really got into
downloading utilities (never the need) I thought I would give RegClean a go
as I have never really looked at the Registry and occasionally get problems
when shutting down windows (hangs) - and a messy registry could be ONE of
many reasons for this.

I have IE5 installed so should have no worries regards the issue with an out
of date version of OLEAUT32 on board which MS state can be an issue with
RegClean... however when I run the utility it goes through a few initial
progress screens but ALWAYS gets no further than the "SCANNING TYPE LIBRARY
IDENTIFIER FOR ERRORS" progress stage (a few blocks on the progress graph -
always stops on the exact same number of blocks!). I see in the help guide
that MS indicate that this program can sometimes look as if it has stopped
and quotes up to 30mins if necessary - but after 45-60mins I had no progress
so assumed it was simply unable to progress (had to end program via
Ctrl-Alt-Del method)

What may be causing the problem??

--
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Deep Thought
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Alan Edwards - 20 Apr 2004 20:46 GMT

Try running RegClean with a command-line argument:
REGCLEAN /L

This will create a log file (called RegClean.LOG) in the same
directory as RegClean. It will be a *very* large text file.
When it stalls, open up RegClean.log in a good text editor or Wordpad.
See if you can pick an error. If it is not obvious, then post the last
12 lines and someone may spot the fault.

It will probably stop at a line like this:
HELPDIR = " ???k"

Use Regedit.exe (Start-Run-Regedit)
Search for that string (Edit-Find or Ctrl+F) and when you find it,
highlight the HELPDIR key in the left-hand pane, rightclick and Delete
and confirm the deletion.
Press F3 to search again. There will be two or three such strings.
Delete as you did the first one.
Note: Don't have the "match whole string only" box ticked when doing
the search for the culprit string.

An alternative is to search for HELPDIR in Regedit and keep on
pressing F3 until you find the first one that is obviously wrong. Any
others will be close by.
Mine was no. 74 of 191 occurrences, so this can take a while in
Regedit.

If this seems a huge task, then the easy way out is to not run
Regclean. It is not essential.

...Alan

Signature

Alan Edwards, MS MVP W95/98 Systems
http://dts-l.org/index.html

In microsoft.public.win95.setup, "Deep Thought"
<Trout@MaskReplica.org> wrote:

>Can anyone help out with an oddball here...
>
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>
>What may be causing the problem??

Reply to this Message

Deep Thought - 20 Apr 2004 23:09 GMT

I appear to have found a similar fix via Google news... had to edit a couple
of registry entries that apparently point to dead-ends and have subsequently
run RegClean successfully... thanks (we will see in the weeks to come if I
have completely shagged one of my existing programs as a result!)

> Try running RegClean with a command-line argument:
> REGCLEAN /L
[quoted text clipped - 50 lines]
> >progress screens but ALWAYS gets no further than the "SCANNING TYPE LIBRARY
> >IDENTIFIER FOR ERRORS" progress stage (a few blocks on the progress

raph -

> >always stops on the exact same number of blocks!). I see in the help guide
> >that MS indicate that this program can sometimes look as if it has stopped
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> >
> >What may be causing the problem??

Reply to this Message