Windows Me - Clean the Windows registry completely

Not only the hard disk can overflow with garbageThe Windows registry should be included in your cleaning activities for regular maintenance, as faulty uninstall routines, unnecessarily installed tools/applications/games or superfluous Windows keys are particularly important here when it comes to speed. We have three tools for you that will make your search for orphaned and useless registry keys much easier:

- Microsoft RegClean 4.1a (Programmed by Microsoft, but abandoned)
- RegSupreme
- JV16-PowerTools

(Please download these tools now)

1. With the Microsoft RegClean 4.1a Remove basic errors and debris: Start MS RC 4.1 and wait until the check has been completed. Then click on Fix Errorsto complete the process - unfortunately no information is given as to what was changed, but our tests showed that some keys were changed and deleted.

Even on our Windows Tweaks test PC (Windows Server 2003 with the following software: Nvidia driver, 2 benchmarks and 3 games) 65 values were deleted. On our main computer, as many as 157 (!) entries were deleted.
2. Useless keys with the professional tool RegSupreme delete: Open RegSupreme and select the most thorough method (Extra Deep) to analyze the registration. Don't worry: this took us 32 seconds!

Now click on Select/All and then to Fix. A dialog box appears asking you to enter the name of the registry backup. Now, in our case, 989 unnecessary entries are deleted.

You can then use Backups... undo the changes at any time!
3. For die-hard enthusiasts: Purge the registry piece by piece with the JV16 PowerTools!
After installing the PowerTools, you should start directly with the Registry tools-section. Below are the settings from our first sub-category Registry Manager (first symbol) is explained:

Installed software: I recommend removing all software components that you no longer use. In our case, only 3-4 orphaned entries (e.g. from Flash Player) were found and deleted.

Starting Programs: In principle, this does what is behind my Windows tweaks article Disable the hidden autostart programs. However, the programs are not deactivated, but their entries are completely deleted - but thanks to the JV16 backup, this is not a problem. I removed all entries in the example!

Uninstall Menu: Those who no longer have the comfort of System control/software to delete/modify its programs, you can delete all entries. From now on, you must either use the installation CD or the program directories (uninstall.exe etc.) to uninstall/change your applications.

Registered File Types: If you have a lot of time, you can download the list of here (Part III) and thus remove the complete remainder of the deleted file types.

In my example, I was able to remove 329 of 458 file types, as the rest were not needed by my applications or for my use at all. If error messages appear after a restart, it is advisable to find out which file type is missing and restore it. For example, I accidentally selected the .scf file that is responsible for the Show desktop icon in the quick launch bar during the test. One click on Backup in the JV16 PowerTools and I was able to select which value should be restored.

Attention: Registered File Types is a dangerous tool. You need to know exactly what you are doing when you delete file types - but in many cases you can't do that at all, which is why, if in doubt, one thing applies: Hands off, because it's not worth it. On the other hand, with a lot of caution and knowledge, you can also gain a lot, because many tools leave their file types behind even after uninstallation.

New File Shell Extension: Here you will find the entries that are available via Desktop > Right click > New can be reached. If you do not need them, you will save some registry space (which is not significant).

Shell Extensions: The operations that link one (or more) programs to a file type are described here. For example, a JPG file can be opened or printed directly. Scroll once in the list to the entries jpegfile and look at the following columns. Once Open is listed as a command and the next entry Print!
As with Registered File Types because hands off is a good motto if you are not sure.

IE Context Menu: The context menu (appears when right-clicking) of Internet Explorer contains some functions that are added by applications such as Office. For example, it is possible to export the contents of a page to an Excel spreadsheet with a single click! If you don't need these features: Delete!
Now switch to the Registry Cleaner and leave all settings to default and wait some time (2-3 minutes at most) until the entire registry has been scanned for residual traces. Remove these now!

I won't go into the remaining settings any further, as these are already covered (much more extensively) by other Windows tweaks tips or are less relevant to the topic of system tuning. You can now close JV16-PowerTools and restart the PC: After restarting, you should test all programs and, if errors occur, use the JV16 backup tool. I hope that this tip has now lightened your system by a few entries and improved the performance somewhat (which was indeed the case with my test technicians)!

NOTE FOR NEW PUBLICATION: This article was produced by Sandro Villinger and comes from the Windows tweaks archive, which has been built up since the late 1990s.