Can anyone recommend a safe registry cleaner and source of same for Win7 please?
(Background: I've installed Plustek 'OpticBook 3800' scanner software including Book Pavilion and ABBYY Finereader Sprint 9. Works absolutely splendidly scanning pages and converting them to searchable pdf files - or at least did work splendidly until I had a glitch. Now BookPavilion does the scan, kicks off Finereader to convert to pdf's, but instead of being in the back ground Finereader comes up as it's own application, cannot find the scanned data then locks up. Tedious having scanned 80 pages several times !! :(
I've uninstalled, then re-installed the software but it still does the same. Then I've installed it on another pc and it works as it should so I am assuming some flag or other is wrongly set in the registry and not being removed on uninstallation.
Seriously, there is no such thing as safe registry software, however, in your position I'd try some stuff. How long ago did you install it, If its not too long, uninstall it with REVO uninstaller, assuming these are 32 bit apps. Use the most aggressive mode. The good thing about the registry scanner in revo is that it knows exactly what its looking for from the uninstaller. If you then re install and still get issues, then I guess its t time for a system restre to before the first install, which should fix it, but of course anything else installed since will also go away. Lastly, you can try Eusing free registry cleaner, but be warned it is very powerful indeed so do not mess with it. I also do use regedit of course if I know what I'm after, and ccleaner too, but that is very basic registry tweaking.
He can, but then he has to install every other thing he installed since. Revo should be your friend, but please if these pieces of software need to work together, uninstall all of them FIRST, before reinstalling any, as the error might well be in one of the others. Brian
Download and install the free version of Revo Uninstaller.
Re-install the scanner software.
Uninstall the scanner software from within Revo Uninstaller, accepting the options to delete registry keys and orphaned program files. Note you explicitly have to check the tick box for the files/keys offered then click "Delete All".
Although I would say on balance it was safe you should always back things up before open heart surgery on a PC. The registry is a fragile entity and when you have to go in there with a flint axe or chainsaw things can get ugly very quickly with just a minor mistake.
Also make a note of any magic identities or passwords you have stored for websites - it is far too easy for overly zealous cleaners to remove perfectly good cookies that were there to make your life easier...
I hear this endlessly and it's bollocks, frankly. People talk of the registry as if it's made of myrrh and impossibilium, but it's really fairly straight forward and, in the latest incarnations, almost impossible to delete anything OS related anyway when one's trying.
Assuming the vaguest familiarity with reading and being able to control one's delete finger, it's certainly a damn sight safer to go in and edit it than trust some sort of registry cleaner (which all appear to be Conware anyway.) And zapping a few keys in HKLM/Software/ ain't going to break anything.
Anyway, I reckon the problem is with file type associations.
+1 for Ccleaner. It's free and is a tried and trusted registry cleanup tool.
There's no point in using other "registry cleaners". At best, they'll do no more than Ccleaner and, at worst, they can screw things up and, even worse, will claim to have found hundreds of problems requring you to register the program to effect a cure (they're 'payware' or 'ransomware' mis-selling themselves as 'Freeware').
System Restore does suffer the inherent weakness of 'fragility'. The problem is the sheer complexity of the problem faced by System Restore. The 'Last Known Good system restore point' can be a real life saver and it can usually do a fair job with recent restore points but the further back in time you have to go, the less likely it will succeed. That's one good reason right there why you should limit the amount of disk space reserved to restore points to a more sane level of a GB or so rather than the default 12% of a 1TB HDD.
The only guaranteed method of restoration is to make boot/system disk image backups[1]. Once you've established your base load of installed apps you can slacken the rate of backups to one a month, perhaps to as few as two or three a year (even a 6 month backup is a better bet than a full install and a shitload of windows service pack updates and hotfixes).
[1] This is one damn good reason to partitition even an SSD into a seperate OS and software disk volume and a seperate user data volume. It lets you concentrate on the OS and apps as a compact disk image backup for speedy restoration (and backup).
I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. It's true enough that you could run into space allocation problems if you underestimate the OS and software space requirements at first iteration but you should have a reasonably accurate enough idea of these requirements before you even consider creating such a partitioning arrangement.
A reasonable rule of thumb for Vista/win7/win8 is to allow 50GiB and another 50GiB for your mainstream software installs (either two seperate 50GiB partitions or, a safer bet, a single 100GiB partition.
Another way to approach this is to estimate a minimum safe size for the OS, either from experience or by googling and add another 50 to
100 percent (it's better to over allocate than under).
Earlier, this afternoon, I was tasked by an old customer of mine to partition up a replacement 500GB HDD for a laptop which had a 640GB hdd that had totally disappeared from the BIOS, along with its win7 installation and user data files.
After confirming the fault was in the failed HDD's controller, I fitted the new 500GB (465GiB) drive and booted from a win7 install DVD to run the partitioning utility. In this case, I took the safer option of specifying a 100GB primary partition for the installation (ample space for the OS _and_ the user installed software).
Knowing that the win7 installer partitioning routine pinches the first 100MB for the sys boot partition, I specified 102500MB to get a neat 100GB "drive C" primary partition. When I tried to create an extended partition using the remaining 365GiB of the disk, I discovered that it would only create a third primary partition.
I did consider leaving that space unallocated so my customer could deal with its allocation after finishing the windows install so he'd have access to the more fully featured disk management tool to create an extended partition with a 365GiB logical drive but thought better of it. Instead, I rebooted from the very useful Parted Magic USB drive and finished the job with the partition editor.
The extra trouble I went to in making sure the second user accessable disk volume was a logical one was to make damn sure the OS could only be installed onto the one and only available primary dos partition (the 100GB one) and to avoid the muddle of optical drive being assigned the drive letter D by default and the logical disk volume becoming drive E by default).
I did suggest to my customer that he aught to re-allocate the drive letter W to the optical drive (inevitably, these past 8 or more years, a DVD re-_W_riter) so that any additional guest drives plugged into USB ports will be given drive letters in a more logical and less confusing fashion.
I also reminded him to change the user folders paths from their default drive C locations to drive D based paths. Whether this last advice is heeded is questionable but if it isn't, it's a trivially easy fix for when he comes back crying about "low disk space on drive C" warning messages.
When it comes to using disk cloning/imaging tools such as Paragon Hard Disk Manager which can intelligently skip unused clusters and create compressed images, the excess unused disk space becomes immaterial so you can afford to be a little on the generous side, especially when using very large disk drives where an extra 50GB on a
1TB HDD represents a mere 5% of 'wasted disk space' (less than half that wasted by the default allocation made by "System Restore").
Aside from the "User Files" issue, I'm pretty confident that the partitioning is more or less spot on the money for this laptop's use.
Blimey. Linux installs in a little over 6 GB, and with applications here I am only using 36GB and that includes a full windows XP virtual machine and disk (18GB) AS WELL.
Excluding data 20GB is more than enough for linux.
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