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Thanks for explaining the ERUNT situation, Bill.
I knew about Ntuser.dat; I did not grasp it completely.

But I was convinced that System Restore does keep a FRESH copy of the system hives in a snapshot. I remember reading about that, looking for options in case of Windows booting troubles.
I re-googled and got this article back as a first hit: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545 .
It looks possible restoring registry system hives using the Recovery Console. One caveat there though: OEM installations.

So, ERUNT seems the best companion anyways, even in case of a borked Windows in a not-booting disaster scenario. Nice, very nice

While System Restore has a copy of the hives, they are not accessible unless you harvest the original hives from the date of installation. Nor can you use the registry hives from your last invocation of XP that was successful; you have to use registry hives that are older than your last successful start.

You cannot directly use the hives as replacements. What ERUNT allows you to do is to use the Recovery Console BATCH command to restore the hives directly from a backup created either manually or automatically on each successful boot.

If you ever actually follow the instructions in that article, you are are for a long, tricky and too frequently problematic haul to get back in business. It is much easier to boot to the Recovery Console and type:

cd erdnt
cd autobackup
cd {newest_foldername}
batch erdnt.con

Done.

For a free utility, it is tough to argue with the notion that one should install the little application and let it autobackup your registry hives at every boot.

I agree, there's no arguing with that!
Have tons of respect for that little application now.

Check CCleaner's forums and you will see problems with their registry cleaner as well. I am sure I could find another dozen of free registry cleaners that have not been mentioned BUT that does not mean they are safe to use.

It is better to be safe than to be sorry - just don't use them.

However, CCleaner does prompt the user to make a back-up of changes that are about to be made. Woe betide the user who does not do so (or those who do but are too quick on the draw to delete the backups).

If you do a backup with CCleaner and then OS does not boot - are you able to access it? It appears to be similar to making backups with regedit.

Good question. Assuming you CAN boot into Safe Mode, the back-ups should be available to you, though, as well as System Restore.

So, in other words CCleaner's backups are useless if you can't boot in safe mode whereas ERUNT can be accessed from the recovery console. Sounds the best option would still be to NOT use a registry cleaner and if you do then use ERUNT and not rely on the registry cleaner's backups.

I was neither endorsing CCleaner (or any other such utility) nor comparing it to ERUNT.

This thread is entitled "Should I Use a Registry Cleaner?" Let's not get too OT here, please. Thank you.

The point I am trying to make (which is totally on topic) is:

Q. "Should I Use a Registry Cleaner?"
A. I strongly suggest against it - but if you do - you should find a different way of backing up your registry instead of relying on the registry cleaner's backup.

<kibbitz @ dahli> No, you shouldn't use a registry cleaner for WinXP. Registry cleaning will do nothing for performance and merely add risk to damaging your system.

System restore does back up the XP registry and can be run in safe mode. Should it not run in normal mode, safe mode is recommended for system restore. Ref.: Bert Kinney's Fantastic SR site

Additionally, Safe Mode with command prompt can also be used. Ref.: SR using Safe Mode with Command Prompt This method also uses System Restore so please see my cautionary note below.

Caution
One must be careful in relying on system restore points as registry backups as the checkpoints are FIFO and depending upon how much space is allocated to SR, your checkpoint may be gone before you realize there's a problem.

Advice
It's also a good idea, IMHO, to test system restore every once in a while to ensure that it's working properly. My thinking is that should one encounter problems (for whatever reason) and need system restore to save their hide, it's nice to know that it's working properly. It's a sinking feeling when you're trying to restore only to have it fail.

How to test System Restore

1. Create a new restore point named TEST.

2. Create a new shortcut on the desktop and point it to My Computer or any other file of your choice and name it TEST.

3. Now restore to the Test restore point.

4. The system will now reboot, and you will receive a message if the restore was successful, and the Test shortcut on the desktop will be gone.

Registry Backup
A manual backup of the registry can also be performed:

To back up the key please do the following
• Copy the contents of the Code Box below to Notepad.
  
• Name the file export.bat
• Change the "Save as Type" to All Files
• and Save it on the desktop
Code:
regedit /e C:\export-run.reg "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run"
Double-click the export.bat file
The backup file will be placed in your C:\ directory as export-run.reg .

If there is a fatal error you can simply double click on the export-run.reg you just created to restore the registry to the state it was in before you began.

Hope this helps.

Good Luck
</kibbitz @dahli>

I think most of these registry cleaning programs are a gimick design by these companies to buy there products besids they are also fixed again so
you can buy there products also they are unnessary if everything is fine all you neen is a virus and spywear adwear program and guys I'm no ms- mvp and I know that also if it's ain't broke don't fix it.

Back in the hay day of Win95,98 Microsoft offered a utility called RegCleaner (if its made by Microsoft you know its good, heh) After seeing it hose several machines (usually by deleting the registry entries for the sound card driver) I gave it the deep six.

I then started using Norton RegCleaner and never had any problems (as far as I know) Then started using RegistryFix which has a very nice feature for removing and restoring run on startup entries (for instance I use Acrobat maybe once a month, so why have it load and consume resources every day just to have it start a little faster)

However after reading this thread I'm convinced that most "errors" are probably self correcting or of no concern or certainly of much less concern then hosing my system. I've used RegistryFix and Norton at least once a week for years, usually getting lots of invalid activeX and missing shortcut "errors" which I always wondered about as I would not have had installed or uninstalled any programs between scans. This leads me to believe that many of these "errors" are indeed self correcting or of no concern. In fact if you run a registry fixer right after a fresh install of windows it will usually find around a hundred "errors"

Yea chances are you won't hose your system, but if it aint broke don't fix it is most always the best choice indeed. I've been working with computers since 1979 and when people like Fred Langa and Mark Russinovich have something to say I listen.

Will I ever use RegistryFix again, probably, although only once in a great while if at all after reading this thread, (I do like the feature that removes run on startup options while making it easy to restore them) and I'll be sure a registry backup and restore point is available too. But after reading this thread I'm thinking different about registry fixers.

For management of startup items there are far better weapons. Look at a Mark Russinovich (co-author) freeware product from Microsoft/Sysinternals called AutoRuns: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysint ... oRuns.mspx
This lets you manage the startup of nearly every autorun, Shell item, context menu handler, ActiveX control, .etc on your system.

For management of autorun startup entries only, Mike Linn's little "Startup Manager" program is a classic of the type (and also free):
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

AFAIK, Norton never offered a utility named RegCleaner or RegClean, SSB.