Windows 10 Quick Tips – Registry Cleaner Scams

Registry Cleaner Scams

The Registry

Dave’s Computers Tips has often published articles that suggest making changes to your Windows Registry. This can be a hazardous place in which to be tinkering. We always try to warn you before making changes to your Registry; you should create a Registry back up before making these changes. If you don’t know how to make a Registry backup, check out this Quick Tips article right here on DCT: Windows Quick Tips – Backup/Restore Registry

Unlike most Quick Tips articles, this is not so much of a How-To article as it is a Do-Not article. Read on to protect yourself…

The Good

There are many good reasons to change settings in the Windows Registry. It gives you control over settings which would otherwise not be available to you in the normal Windows interface. Examples might be:

• Changing Fonts
• Changing the Context Menu
• Customizing the Taskbar
• Eliminating Windows Update interference  🙂

The true power of understanding the Windows Registry can be an incredible experience.

The Bad

The downside of editing the Registry is that if you aren’t sure of what your are doing, and don’t pay close attention to detail,  the results can be catastrophic. Windows may not even boot properly. We don’t want that. And “cleaning the registry” is most certainly not an approach we recommend as a questionable “fix”. If you’ve gotten buried this deep in the barrel, it probably won’t work anyway.

The Scams

Here is a quick video from Linus Tech Tips that will give you a good idea of what I am talking about– in true Linus form, of course:

If you’ve never watched Linus’s videos before, it can be quite the experience. He is excitable. At the same time, I believe he knows what he’s talking about and his advice should be respected. His YouTube videos are generally well worth watching if you want to learn something.

Final Words

The bottom line here is not to fall for the many crooks’ attempts out there to empty your pocketbook by convincing you that Registry Cleaners are a necessary thing. To the contrary, they are to be avoided and mistrusted.

As Linus points out, you will garner no legitimate boosts in performance by spending your hard-earned cash on bogus Registry Cleaners. I agree with his conclusions and have have been preaching this for years… perhaps even before Linus was born? I don’t know for sure… checking…  born August 20, 1986… yep!!  I started preaching in ’82.

You have been warned,

Richard

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