Registry Tools

I was at a neighbor's house a couple of weeks ago, and there were maybe a dozen people sitting on the deck. One person asked me what Windows Registry cleaner I recommended. I was talking to a gentleman from Microsoft at the time, and we both looked at this person and said "none!"

First, if you aren't familiar with the Windows Registry you might want to check out the Wikipedia definition. Basically, the Registry is a hideously complex file that contains all the information that is necessary (and necessary is the key word here) for Windows to talk to all the hardware and software. The following is directly from the Microsoft Support site:

• WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

There are a lot of tools out there that claim to be able to root out and remove unused entries and to prevent unauthorized Registry entries. But how do these developers know what's necessary and what's not? I recently had a client who couldn't install the latest Microsoft service pack (SP3) on her XP machine. Seems the Registry optimization tool she was using had locked a couple of critical Registry entries.

In my opinion, Registry tools should all be looked at skeptically. I believe there are some that can dig out entries that no longer have prorams associated with them, but I don't think these entries really impact your computer's performance. What's your take?