After using (and probably abusing) registry cleaners for several years on a variety of computers and Windows OS's, and reading lots of reasonably informed opinions, I am gradually coming to the conclusion that at least for newer Windows systems, registry cleaning is unnecessary and likely to do much more harm than good in the hands of a novice, or even a trusting expert. "Oh, look, it says it can clean 1465 entries if I just click here! I wonder what all those entries were for? It wants me to create a restore point - I don't know what that is, so I better not. Oh, well . . ." Click. "Hey, why isn't my [os/program/hardware] working any more?"

I have never noticed (subjectively) any change in system performance after a "cleaning". So, I'm considering just simply not doing it any more. Not to completely diss housekeeping utilities like Ccleaner - they have other tools that are certainly very useful. It just seems like this whole registry cleaning thing may be somewhat bogus, falling under the same heading as RAM optimizers. JMHO.