On 05 Mar 17  01:51:50, Sean Dennis said the following to Nick Andre:

SD>  NA> HijackThis 1.99 as Administrator to more accurately contro what is
SD>  NA> loaded on system startup.
SD> 
SD> msconfig will do the same thing without an additional program being install

I wasn't knocking MsConfig and Hijackthis is a portable executable.

SD> A lot of my time in my own 30+ years of experience in supporting over 2000 
SD> machines at a time is that Windows can't wipe its own ass.  Sometimes just 
SD> cleaning up Windows' temp directories and a reboot will do wonders.
SD> 
SD> I can also "guarantee" you that if you look around enough, you'll find 
SD> Microsoft admitting Windows is messy and needs its ass wiped every few mont

Agreed.

SD>  NA> DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, run "snake oil" programs like
SD>  NA> registry defragmenters, registry cleaners, etc.
SD> 
SD> That's funny that you say that since Windows does leave a lot of crap in th
SD> registry that can cause problems.  You can make a backup of the registry 
SD> before you clean it.

Sean, you will NOT find ANY website, support group or company that recommends 
running the snake-oil programs I'm referring to:

https://www.howtogeek.com/171633/why-using-a-...
ur-pc-or-fix-crashes/

I'm talking about average joe computers. Not 2000 computers on a domain. And 
average joe computers will end up on a tech's workbench with any number of 
these snake-oil programs installed.

At no time in ANY Microsoft or CompTIA certification courses or in DarT it is
ever suggested or implied that the registry ever needs cleaning or
defragmenting. DarT has its own limitations.  Nothing bad about it, just not
the right tools I would use for a typical job of troubleshooting a "slow"
computer.

Regarding SMART and drive checking. The point was not to start a lengthly 
disk-intensive operation like a defragment which you know for a fact only has 
very little improvement on NTFS volumes when you do not know the history or 
the state of the hard drive. The days of FAT32 and Windows 95 and the night &
day differences are gone. Many customer computers have hard drives on their
last-legs, have never been backed up, etc. Why risk anything further?

Darkrealms has ran for decades on Windows. It has never needed any registry
cleaning or defragmenting. It has ran as fast as it did from day one.

SD> I'm really surprised that you're giving out bad advice.  DarT, Microsoft's
SD> toolset, includes a registry cleaner.  So are you going to say that 
SD> Microsoft's giving out "snake oil" or just admit that you'd talking out one
SD> side of your mouth about my advice?

Nowhere was I looking to start an arguement or a debate about the advice being
dolled out, just stating my own point of view. I'm not going to argue with you
about what I agree or disagree with... but I did find it a bit surprising that
you would suggest defragmenting and throwing a few things at the problem, when
you come from a tremendous tech background. Unless its a classic 
misunderstanding, I'm sure you can agree you don't just throw things at the 
problem in hopes it gets fixed.

In short, if you read carefully, you would see that:

- I suggested not defragmenting anything without knowing the history of the 
hard drive.

- I suggested not screwing around with programs that claim to do miracles to 
the registry.

- I suggested backups and taking a snapshot image of the drive volume.

You would consider these things to be bad advice??!?

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
 * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)