Wisely or not, I have been using registry scanning software. What puzzles me is that quite a lot of the 'errors' are pdf and Word files. Why would an ordinary file saved into an ordinary directory create a registry entry?
Sometimes it's the list "these are the last X files this program opened"...
Thomas Prufer
I can see that but why would these be so prone to registry errors if they are by definition recent creations?
They're not errors, I'd stop running the registry "cleaner".
Say for example you access a file, and hence it gets recorded as a recently used one. Then you delete it or rename it (or it was accessed in a temporary folder which has since been "cleaned"). The registry entry now points at a non existent file, which might be interpreted by the cleaner as an "error".
The files are no longer at the same location as listed in the registry?
Adobe Acrobat has five entries in its menu for "Recent Items". And there are five sections in the registry named c1,c2,c3,c4,c5 for holding such absolute-path filenames.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\AVGeneral\cRecentFiles\c2
The OS holds references to Recent Items in a folder, with a shortcut to each. Whereas the designers of Acrobat Reader, decided to hold such references in some registry entries.
The Registry is a miniature file system, and it can actually hold just about anything. It can hold whole files, if someone was stupid enough to try :-) There are lots of binary blobs in there. Not every entry is a "DWORD 1" as a Boolean. Some entries are a lot longer.
Paul
Then it is an 'error' whether of any importance or not.
An error of the 'registry cleaner' to care. Most of these applications are snake oil. Always knowingly oversold.
Deleting items written by something else requires some programmatic intelligence to understand cross application dependencies. Maybe not the recently used list, but you are (mis-)placing a lot of trust in a utility to know.
Imagine if even windows actively spent time cleaning up after itself and all the random applications installed by no-names, what a slow experience that would be. And it would probably get it just as wrong as well.
Install Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer, and you'll find many, many, attempts by the OS to repeatedly seek items that are not there. It seems quite happy doing that, even with things that are not in the registry.
All true. You might mean Process Monitor than Process Explorer. It really does show a lot of failed Windows actions.
Scott snipped-for-privacy@gefion.myzen.co.uk> wrote
Without checking that carefully, that appears to be due to the list of files last used most recently that most apps let you see when you open a file, and the list of ones you pin.
Scott snipped-for-privacy@gefion.myzen.co.uk> wrote
Presumably your scanner can't easily check when the app has added one date wise and so flags it as an error when it isn't actually an error or has no way of checking if it really is the number that app keeps.
Its the path to it, as a shortcut in the system. They can get disconnected, especially if the file is moved etc. You will also see orphaned file extensions that are no longer in use, and some internal links to bits of software which were changed during an update to the software or windows. In the main of course they do not matter, but keeping the registry compact and sorted can help on slower machines or those with old fashioned physical discs. Beware decrementing a registry on ssds though, as these seem to shorten their lives.
Also I think caution is needed when setting up registry scanners as some software can use it in unorthodox ways, so a clean up can mean a bit of software needs a reinstall, Virtual recorder is like that I find. Brian
Because you moved the file or something else did, or deleted it altogether. They are not really errors, you often find if you look down the list of files in a program, that an attempt to load one of those in the list may fail since its no longer there, but there is no real harm as such. The one that often amuses me is all the unused entries that often contain complete junk left over, most probably, from an installation or update which has not tidied up after itself.
Brian
And an uninstall of some of the "popular" virus checkers are often the biggest culprits for leaving crap on the hard disk and multiple registry entries that haven't been cleaned up. Plus, some will leave the nag screen so in the future you will be informed that there is an update to the software that has been deleted.
This does not fully explain it. It seems to produce 'errors' in applications I don't use, eg Edge and Zune.
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