OCD and Win 7

[Cuzzin Chizzy]

I was wondering how picky( if at all) I should be about my current Windows 7 installation. I've had my current install for about a year now and have been trying to make sure that I take proper care of my system, but I have a concern about my upkeep methods.

I have Norton Anti-Virus, I use Disk Defrag, CCleaner regularly, and Auslogics Registry Cleaner as well.
All of my files and folders are extremely organized and everything is streamlined.
I even use Revo uninstaller for any programs i no longer need.

I guess my main concern is that I've heard from people that using a REGISTRY CLEANER can be bad for your system.
I've recently been having some problems with my computer. I believe the culprit is a failing HDD but am paranoid that maybe after all of the times of cleaning my registry, it is too far gone from how the registry is on a fresh windows install.

I have thought about reinstalling Windows and starting from scratch, but I've spent A LOT of time setting my system up the way it is now. Drivers, layout, system settings, individual program settings.

Can you mess up your windows 7 by using registry cleaners?

Should I start over from scratch and reinstall everything? Everything seems to be fine besides accessing the one HDD. The only weird thing that I notice is sometimes when I click on the start menu the aero backdrop is gone and a plain black backdrop is in its place(on the right side of the start menu, behind "computer" and "control panel".)

 

[rgd1101]

Can you mess up your windows 7 by using registry cleaners?
could be. but you can overuse you Hard drive in you defrag, full virus scan all the time. How often do you do that?

 

[aaab]

Short answer is yes you can mess up your windows 7 install with a registry fixer.

Looks like you don't have a genuine copy of windows 7 / it hasn't been activated. (hence the black screen)

I suggest you go and buy a copy.

 

[azathoth]

I use both Tuneup Utilities and CCleaners registry 'cleaners' on a regular basis, and before I had a SSD they vastly effected my boot speed and program responsiveness in a positive manner, shaving off a few noticeable seconds.

Using a very early version of Tuneup utilities, about 3 years ago after a registry 'clean' my computer would crash about 6 seconds after hitting desktop even in safe mode.

That was the only problem I ever had, and required a full re-install to fix my OS. I still believe they provide more pro's then con's, especially now that most if not all those types of bugs have be ironed out.

 

[azathoth]

Short answer is yes you can mess up your windows 7 install with a registry fixer.

Looks like you don't have a genuine copy of windows 7 / it hasn't been activated. (hence the black screen)

I suggest you go and buy a copy.

Not necessarily, I've seen it happen more then a few times on PC's where the OS has been damaged and the desktop background is messed up. Sometimes it does even display the code thingy in the bottom right corner. (OEM windows installs, Genuine)

 

[Cuzzin Chizzy]

Short answer is yes you can mess up your windows 7 install with a registry fixer.

Looks like you don't have a genuine copy of windows 7 / it hasn't been activated. (hence the black screen)

I suggest you go and buy a copy.

Uhhhhh OK. My copy of windows 7 is 100% legitimate. My whole screen is not black. Just the area in my start up menu. And it's not all the time just sometimes. Like if I click on the start menu and then click somewhere off of the start menu, sometimes the menu stays up and the backdrop turns black. Other than that boot speed seems normal.

 

[Cuzzin Chizzy]

Can you mess up your windows 7 by using registry cleaners?
could be. but you can overuse you Hard drive in you defrag, full virus scan all the time. How often do you do that?

Not that often, maybe defrag once every month and virus scan once every two weeks.

 

[azathoth]

Uhhhhh OK. My copy of windows 7 is 100% legitimate. My whole screen is not black. Just the area in my start up menu. And it's not all the time just sometimes. Like if I click on the start menu and then click somewhere off of the start menu, sometimes the menu stays up and the backdrop turns black. Other than that boot speed seems normal.

Easiest way to solve these problems is to simply re-install windows.
Backup most recent drivers and all the programs/movies/documents ect. to an external drive, pop in the windows disk and reformat+reinstall.

 

[rdc85]

Windows 7 had auto defrag if I'm not mistaken so not need manual defrag it..

Yes using reg cleaner can mess up the reg. it nu insane for people who know how to keep installation clean and do more bad than good. but for average user (often install and uninstall) it will help/benefit...

I'm stopped using reg cleaner after bad experience with it in xp..

edit: for hard disk health u can start by reading smart data, and make notice about its sound when turn on/running...

For aero suddenly off, never experienced them so dunno

 

[Cuzzin Chizzy]

Easiest way to solve these problems is to simply re-install windows.
Backup most recent drivers and all the programs/movies/documents ect. to an external drive, pop in the windows disk and reformat+reinstall.

Question.

First, I do actually have all of my data on an external drive. Audio, video, pics, docs, etc.

How do I back up my drivers?

Is there a way to back up the settings of my programs?

Or are you saying that I can just copy my programs folder over to an external drive? How would that work with a clean Win 7 install. Wouldn't I have to re-install all of the programs again anyway?


I guess that's my main beef with a reinstall. I produce music and audio on my rig and I have my DAW's setup to talk to my EMU external sound dock/mixer. Plus I was very precise about only loading programs I want, setting up startup, services, user folder locations. etc.

 

[Cuzzin Chizzy]

Actually my system seems really fast. Everything opens right when I click on it.

 

[skaz]

I would just stick with your AV of choice and CCleaner. Windows 7 uninstaller works fine in most cases.

 

[MidnightDistort]

Your anti virus choice is fine. Although i use Avast or even prefer Bitdefender. How often are you defragging your computer?

Sometimes doing it every week regardless on whether it's necessary or not could cause your hard drive to wear out and have premature death. I think Win 7's defragmenter is like Vista, it doesn't show you much of any information. I use defraggler for my defragmenting needs and you can use it do defrag any files, instead of defragmenting the entire drive which takes time and can be more harmful then helpful.

Using CCleaner is fine, i only use CCleaner with the registry and there's a nice backup registry function if it has any adverse affects.

As for your black screen are you getting a Genuine pop up or something saying that your Windows isn't Genuine? Otherwise it seems like you getting some kind of error which could be hard drive related or you might have installed a bad program. I would try to run your AV in safe mode and see if that picks up a virus. Try running scandisk on your computer or HD tune's error scan.

A last ditch effort is to try http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm although it did not fix my hard drive when something went wrong with it and was not accessible. The ribbon cable must have wrote something to it without causing any corruption even though the hard drive was corrupted. SpinRite did not fix the problem, did a reformat and i was continuing to have problems when i attempted to hook the drive up to an external enclosure to recover the data from a backup source. SpinRite encountered bad sectors which i think were fixed. I don't have any issues with the drive now but haven't attempted to use the drive in the external enclosure yet, didn't want to go through another reformat and another SpinRite test again so instead i just used my main external drive. Eventually i'll have to get a bigger hard drive as an external backup instead of relying on my internal 2TB drive in my other PC, don't have the money for it though so i keep that system off.