Daave
Sat Apr 19 07:40:43 PDT 2008
Gordon Stephens wrote:
> Right, thanks Daave - all the advice is about not using Registry
> cleaners, so fair enough, I'll avoid doing so.
>
> The reason I asked was not so much about sluggishness, but the fact
> that there were legacy entries from a previous user on a laptop where
> I had done an upgrade from Win98 to XP Pro and then after getting
> some data off via the USB port onto a memory (didn't work under 98) I
> did a complete fresh install of XP Pro.
>
> When I looked in Documents and Settings, there was the original user
> alongside the current new user, with all the usual folders, but that
> user did not show up in the list of users at start up or any other
> time. When I looked at the registry, there were hundreds of entries
> that related to previous software that must have been deleted rather
> than uninstalled, so it seemed to make sense to remove them. That was
> why I was considering the use of a cleaner.
Gordon, in your situation, it is best to perform a clean install (which
is apparently not what you did) if you are now using someone else's PC.
This way you will be guaranteed there will not be any malicious software
or anything unseemly or illegal on your machine. You may follow these
instructions:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
As far as uninstalling programs the proper way, there are usually traces
of them left over in the registry. This is normal and almost always
never affects performance. Once in a while, it may be necessary to
remove these entries for programs like Norton of McAfee if these entries
cause a conflict. But as a rule, leftover registry entries do not
adversely affect performance.