I've been using registry cleaners since they frist came out and they are best for people who don't have common sense (computer sense) or just dont seen to care. For the most part, they are not needed. They can also do bad things sometimes. I gave up and will not run one on a machine in my house! But for the uneducated, computer illiterate who installes every beta, demo, trialware and the uninstall or reinstall and still running on the same install for 4 years, maybe they would be helpful to them.
The best this to do is when you install "anything" is NEVER ACCEPT THE DEFAULTS", always read what addition programs, toolbars, software and features it will install with it. Especially "DO YOU WANT THIS PROGRAM TO REGULARLLY CHECK FOR UPDATES?" select NO! Having 5 or 10 programs running update programs in the background wastes resources, toobars, spy on you and lead you to purchases the get commission on.
Many people say now that defraging doesn't affect you system performance like they used to think, but i couldn't hurt! I have Norton 360 which says it has a defragmenter included but it really just hijacks the Windows defrag task and runs it as if it were theirs.
You can type services.msc in the Start search bar to see what is running. Rule of thumb "if the system appears to be running fine, don't mess with it". And seriously, don't use system restore unless as a last resort!!!!
