this should have read "RegCure" not Rescuer (but that might help better)

Keep your money in your pocket!  These cleaners do more harm than good,
chances are it will bug up your computer instead of fixing it.

John

You are smart to ask this question. Registry "cleaners" often do harm,
and it has never been demonstrated that they do any good. If you'd like
to explore this topic more, this is a good thread:

http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099

Here are the three most common causes for PC slowness:

1. Malicious software (malware)

2. Certain programs that are designed to combat malware (e.g., Norton
and McAfee). Ironically, they can slow things down because they simply
use way too many resources. Sometime they cause conflicts with other
programs. And their default mode is to scan your entire hard drive each
time you boot up.

3. Too many of *certain types* of programs always running in the
background -- with or without your knowledge.

4. Not enough RAM, which causes the PC to overly rely on the pagefile. A
quick way to determine if this is happening is to open Task Manager
(Ctrl+Alt+Del) and click the Performance tab. Then note the three values
under Commit Charge (K): in the lower left-hand corner: Total, Limit,
and Peak.

The Total figure represents the amount of memory you are using at that
very moment. The Peak figure represents the highest amount of memory you
used since last bootup. If both these figures are below the value of
Physical Memory (K) Total, then you probably have plenty of RAM.
Otherwise, you may want to explore this further by running Page File
Monitor for Windows XP:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm

Everything you need to know to address the other three issues and more
can be found at these links:

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

Think your Registry needs "cleaning" or "repairing"?  Read
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=28099 and draw your own conclusions.

    A registry cleaner - even a safe one, should such ever be developed
- is an exercise in, at best, futility.  There is no real need for
registry cleaners, other than to provide a profit to their
manufacturers.  On rare occasions, registry cleaners can be, in the
hands of a skilled technician, useful, time-saving diagnostic tools.
Otherwise, they're nothing but snake oil.

   Why do you even think you'd ever need to clean your registry?  What
specific *problems* are you actually experiencing (not some program's
bogus listing of imaginary problems) that you think can be fixed by
using a registry cleaner?

    If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would
be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the
specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem.  After
all, why use a chainsaw when a scalpel will do the job?  Additionally,
the manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely
to have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make
multiple changes simultaneously.  The only thing needed to safely clean
your registry is knowledge and Regedit.exe.

    The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration.  A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences.  One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change.

    Having repeatedly seen the results of inexperienced people using
automated registry "cleaners,"  I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user.  If you lack the knowledge and experience to
maintain your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry cleaner,
no matter how safe they claim to be.

    More importantly, no one has ever demonstrated that the use of an
automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained, inexperienced
computer user, does any real good, whatsoever.  There's certainly been
no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such
products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
or stability.  Given the potential for harm, it's just not worth the risk.

    Granted, most registry "cleaners" won't cause problems each and
every time they're used, but the potential for harm is always there.
And, since no registry "cleaner" has ever been demonstrated to do any
good (think of them like treating the flu with chicken soup - there's no
real medicinal value, but it sometimes provides a warming placebo
effect), I always tell people that the risks far out-weigh the
non-existent benefits.

    I will concede that a good registry *scanning* tool, in the hands
of an experienced and knowledgeable technician or hobbyist can be a
useful time-saving diagnostic tool, as long as it's not allowed to make
any changes automatically.  But I really don't think that there are any
registry cleaners that are truly safe for the general public to use.
Experience has proven just the opposite: such tools simply are not safe
in the hands of the inexperienced user.

No!

Don't do that either.

Look elsewhere for the cause of your sluggishness and freezing. It's not
that the registry needs cleaning. All such programs should be avoided like
the plague. What it calls "registry
errors" are not really errors, but probably just orphaned, unused entries,
that don't represent any kind of problem.

I strongly recommend *against* use of registry cleaners. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and don't
use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors
of registry cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry
entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit it may
have.