Wise Care 365 Pro isn't a bad app in terms of installation & that installation's impact on Windows, with ~160 files split between the program's & user folders & a recorded 67 new registry entries, with 23 of those being for uninstall, & another 12 basically garbage. The only thing I saw that was iffy was the addition of the Wise Boot Assistant service, which shows up in Admin Tools -> Services so it can be switched to manual or disabled, & so is a minimal concern.
Will Wise Care 365 Pro do everything advertised? Of Course Not. If it helps or hurts depends for the most part on what you've installed in the past, how much if any of that was removed, & what software you've got installed now. What it amounts to is if you're looking at an app like this chances are you want your system to run better -- if you just got it out of the box & it ran great I doubt you'd give it a 2nd glance. Most likely your PC/laptop is showing its age & the effects [wear & tear if you will] of adding software. Nothing will make your hardware new again, or current, so don't even entertain those claims when they're made, & they will be. There are enough success stories however providing evidence that these apps *may* help, that they can be worth a try -- as long as you can restore a disk/partition image backup, what can it hurt?
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Optimizing, Cleanup, & Tuneup apps...
The other day I said that there are really few ways you can learn about a PC other than to DIY [Do It Yourself], slowly accumulating knowledge & experience. There's all sorts of training available for the more tech stuff, like coding or running an IT dept., but little or nothing in the way of actually using & maintaining Windows. I know & have known pretty high level IT pros with actually Very little knowledge about PCs, how they work, how to use them. So you have an environment where there's loads & loads of info available, much of it contradictory, with a good portion of it made up of opinions with varying degrees of accuracy. Today's GOTD presents an excellent example...
The GOTD, Wise Care 365 Pro, has on its product page: "It takes just one click to use Wise Care 365. As if by magic, your old PC will transform into a brand new and blazing fast one after Wise Care 365's automatic cleanup and tune-up.". That's exaggeration at the least, at worst a lie. One of the earlier comments says: "NO registry “cleaner” is completely safe. There is also no hard evidence that “cleaning” out the registry has any effect on the overall speed of a machine. It will speed up searches within the registry itself – but has no effect on overall performance.". That's either a mistaken opinion or a lie too.
The truth is a bit of Windows housekeeping helps -- the question is whether it's worth your time & trouble. Today we've gotten used to quick answers... rather than remember something so we don't have to take a trip to the library & look it up again, there's Google -- rather than storing docs &/or files, & organizing them so that we can find whatever, there's again Google. But when it comes to Windows registry cleaners, tune-up apps, system optimizers, uninstallers, all that stuff, there's not a single answer for: "Is it good or is it bad?". That doesn't stop anyone from voicing their opinions -- the people that make money selling Wise Care have a reason they want you to believe it's "As if by magic", just like I'm sure the person commenting "No registry "cleaner" is completely safe" has their reasons too. Often life is messy & facts are inconvenient, but below I try to give you enough info to check it out & make your own decisions on what you want to do, if anything, when it comes to keeping your PC or laptop running well enough to keep you happy.
My personal thoughts on software like Wise Care 365 Pro is [as above] that if you have a fresh backup & can easily put things back the way they were, "what can it hurt?". Worst case it'll cost you the time & effort to install & try it, plus the time & effort to restore that backup, so the cost/benefit decision is really in large part based on the amount of time you have available & how motivated you are.
As long as you can put things back restoring a backup, running a registry cleaner or tuneup app is as safe as anything else. Or put another way, there's nothing you can do with a PC/laptop that's 100% risk free. Stuff breaks, Windows screws up, software can cause problems, & then there's malware. When it comes to the size of the registry, smaller is better, faster. If you open a text file in Notepad that has only a single word it opens much faster than a text file that's several meg in size -- try it if you want. Windows reads the registry -- the bigger the registry is, the longer that takes. ERUNT is a cool, older, free app that backs up the registry by copying it as-is to another folder [the advantage of ERUNT is you can restore that copy (backup) outside of Windows in case Windows won't start], and the larger the registry is, the longer it takes to write that backup copy. That's easy for anyone to try as well. One thing that can be an eye opener is to download & run Process Monitor [ http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx ] which "shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity.", or IOW it shows you just how very often & constantly Windows is reading/writing to its registry. It's a small, portable app that you just unzip & run, & all it does is look so you don't have to worry about it damaging anything. Once you see all that going on it's hard to believe extra or unneeded registry entries don't slow things down, whether it's software trying to find an entry or the registry files constantly being re-written to disk etc.
The Catch Is that it takes an awful lot of registry entries to increase the size of the registry to where Windows is noticeably slower -- you have to remove an awful lot of registry entries before it noticeably speeds up -- and by noticeably I mean slight changes that you might notice if you pay attention to that stuff, e.g. the way WR timed how long it took Windows to start for him when he moved to an SSD. My current XP Pro install dates to February 2008 -- a few times I've HAD to clean up the registry to keep it going, to keep it running well, and last time I did a thorough cleaning it took a few days. I've got an awful lot of software installed, had lots more over the life of that XP Pro install, plus I've used the same install over several motherboards, 3 CPUs [2 AMD & one Intel], & 3 graphics cards etc. It worked -- it got performance back up to matching my installed win7. And it would have taken at least a couple more days had I gone the reinstall route because lots of the software is older & not available any longer, so I would have had to dig through 500 discs or more. But that's a special case, circumstances not everyone shares.
A registry cleaner helped, but it wouldn't, couldn't have achieved the same results on its own -- I used it to help find stuff to delete, but went much further... registry cleaners will suggest deleting an entry, but they can't tell if/when you can delete the entire key holding not just that entry, but maybe a dozen or more. That's their biggest inefficiency IMHO, & why many people say they don't work -- remember it takes removing an awful lot of registry entries before you notice a difference [if you don't delete enough you will not see it], & often the registry won't have enough garbage that it'll make a huge difference deleting single entries rather than complete keys. If you Google microsoft.com for Optimize Windows they have different docs for different versions but a recurring theme is re-install Windows -- performing the same sort of advanced search [ http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en-US ] for "reinstall windows" just for microsoft.com hints that's a bit of a trend, with 40,900 results.
Windows is designed to be remarkably fault tolerant -- since the days of DOS [when Bill Gates was still dreaming of Windows] inept & incompetent programers have done their best to screw up PCs, so Windows has always had to be fault tolerant. [That's not badmouthing coders -- it's just a fact of life that whether you're talking engineers or dishwashers or anything in between, incompetent people happen -- most aren't but some are.] While Windows PCs are nowhere near as easy to use as a Apple or Android tablet, Windows is designed so hopefully anyone can use it, & that means Windows has to stand up to an awful lot of abuse. Microsoft's stance IMHO is just use your Windows PC or laptop, do whatever level of maintenance or housekeeping you're comfortable with, & if things eventually stop working well, re-install Windows to put things back & get rid of any problems, any troublemakers that have been installed. My oldest son doesn't care to mess with PCs, & he's used his current PC, running XP Pro, for probably going on 4-5 years since I or his younger brother have touched it. I'm sure I'd be horrified if I looked at it today, but that's just me & maybe a bit of a OCD tendency -- despite probably having enough dust bunnies to fill the vacuum, despite probably having GBs of temp files, despite having so much garbage on his drive & in the registry it'd seem impossible to delete it all, it still runs his games fine. In fact I've got a copy of win7 I bought for him when win7 1st went on sale, & we've got a newer motherboard, CPU, graphics card etc. all set aside, but it runs well enough he's never felt the need to bother bringing his PC over for the upgrades.
Another Gotcha is that some apps [including stuff like Microsoft Office] have a huge impact on Windows, adding loads of files & registry entries [e.g. 10s or even 100s of thousands of new registry entries], while it's unusual for the typical GOTD to add more than at most a few hundred. Even if you were successful removing every unneeded registry entry, along with every unnecessary file, if you have enough high impact software installed it would make little if any difference overall. The same with reinstalling Windows & putting the same high impact software back. If you want Windows to run exactly the way it did when it was freshly installed, before software was added, reinstall it & don't add software. Short of doing that, figure out the strategy that works best for you... Only you can determine what amount of time you can spend & how much effort you want to put into it, your PC/laptop specs determine how critical it is to keep things clean [e.g. watch Task Mgr. when you search in Regedit], & your habits have a big effect too, e.g. how often do you download what, how often do you get rid of it, how much do you install?
I detest installing Windows, & because of that bias I tend to waste an awful lot of time -- If I added up all the time I spent over a year doing Windows housecleaning, it would probably be 10 times the amount I'd spend if I skipped all that & did a yearly re-install [that's Not saying I'd have to re-install Windows every year, but a comparison of the time spent IF I did]. OTOH that approach has its negative aspects too -- I try to keep the kitchen clean rather than wait until it's a hassle to fix a meal, or reach the sink. :) I'm not sure how happy I'd be living with this PC as it approached the time for that re-install. I suspect that somewhere in between those 2 extremes is where most people would be happiest, not creating or letting too big a mess accumulate, but not going nuts trying to keep everything spotless either.
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The effects of installing software, & the challenges of reversing them.
When anyone talks about tuning up or cleaning up Windows they're generally talking about reversing the effects of running & adding software. When you install an app it adds files & probably Windows' registry entries -- it's understandable to want to reverse all of that if & when you decide to uninstall an app for whatever reason. Unfortunately that's one of those things that may be much easier said than done, & in some cases it's even impossible.
There's an old saying [I've read it may date back to the 16th century in the English language]: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". There's no pill, or diet, or bracelet that'll make me 20 years old again. There is no software that will turn back the clock for your PC or laptop either... Do you want Windows to run exactly like it did when 1st installed, before any added software? Then wipe your drive/partition, reinstall Windows, & don't install any software. :)
It would be nice if there was a program that could tell just exactly what any app uses in the way of files & registry entries, & remove that stuff along with the app when you no longer want/need it -- the 1st part, finding all the files used, exists & is called Process Explorer [it's free from Sysinternals at Microsoft.com] -- the 2nd part doesn't because there's no easy way to separate out the stuff that Windows &/or your other software needs, v.s. stuff that wouldn't be missed if it was gone. Some uninstall apps can record the files & registry entries that software adds when it's installed, & they can usually remove more than a recorded app's own uninstall routine, but they'll generally also leave stuff in place that could be removed, & may on occasion remove stuff that you'll wish they didn't. Uninstall apps that don't record an installation are essentially re-badged registry cleaners.
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To find out what an app's installation routine does or adds I've been monitoring installs in VMs [Virtual Machines] for years. One reason I use VMs is that changes are usually found by comparing before & after snapshots, & that's faster & easier when you don't have any software installed -- the less you have the smaller the snapshot & the less time it takes to make one. Another reason is shared files -- a great many apps use a few of the same files, & if a shared file is already there [installed], your before & after snapshots won't reveal that whatever app adds that same file too. A 3rd reason is that it fairly easily eliminates a lot of wear & tear on my regular Windows installs.
Setting up a VM is time consuming but it's not difficult. The 1st step is to install the VM Host software, which in a nutshell is a pretend PC -- it emulates real, physical hardware the same way that something like the Atari emulators pretend to be a game console. VMWare *may* be the best brand, but it's expensive & has I think the steepest learning curve. VirtualBox is free OTOH, & while it will do some of the same advanced stuff as VMWare it's pretty easy to use if you stick to the basics -- you fire up the main console, select which VM you want to run, & click the play or run button -- that's it. Microsoft has their freely available Virtual PC that anyone with win7 can download & install. The good point is that it's tightly integrated with win7, so it's easier to learn & use, but it won't let you use just any Windows version for a VM, & if you don't use Microsoft's XP Mode VM that comes with certain win7 versions, your VM can run a LOT slower than in V/Box or VMWare.
Once you have your VM Host app installed, you can create as many VMs as you like -- you create one by setting the physical attributes of your pretend PC, e.g. how many CPU cores, how much RAM etc., then install Windows or whatever OS in that VM. Next, once that OS is up & running as a VM, you install an add-on package in your VM that's tailored to that OS -- it makes it easier & better, e.g. adding capabilities like being able to copy/paste between your regular Windows & the VM, & better mouse & keyboard operations. A VM itself is Windows [or whatever OS] installed on a Virtual Hard Drive [VHD], so with V/Box I copy/paste a single [albeit large] file to back it up & restore it -- after a session where I might have added however many apps I close down the VM, then copy/paste a baseline copy, overwriting that altered file & everything's just as it was. On update Tuesday I'll start out with a baseline copy, add whatever Windows updates, then after closing it down copy/paste that single file to create a new, updated baseline copy. The closest I've come to a Gotcha is that disk/partition image backup apps [e.g. Paragon] tend to not like those virtual disks, so to back them up I keep copies on an external drive, & delete any virtual disks on a partition before backing up that partition.
Maybe the biggest thing to get used to, and it's pretty minor, is that a VM is not just a separate copy of Windows [or whatever OS], but it's a separate PC as well. Win7's Virtual PC uses Remote Desktop so you can see & interact with all the drives/partitions on your PC from within the VM -- that's why it only lets you use certain Windows versions, because not all of them include that Remote Desktop support. With V/Box OTOH you designate certain folders that will be shared between your VM & your regular, installed copy of Windows -- in the VM you'll find shared folders under Networking in Windows' Explorer.
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To monitor software installation, running, & sometimes uninstall I use an older, free app called InstallWatch Pro, that sadly only works in 32 bit versions of Windows -- it works best in XP, but does work in win7 32. Most of the time I'll monitor installs in XP because it's simpler & smaller, and most everything easily translates to a win7/8 install -- the User folder names & arrangement are just a little different, & win7 [& 8] tends to add extra, for the most part garbage registry entries, meaning registry keys & values Windows adds that are irrelevant to the software itself. If an app catches my interest, if I suspect the install or the way the app works will be different in win7/8, or if it requires something like .NET 4, I'll monitor the install in win7 32. And when called for I've got win7 & 8 64 bit VMs too -- I can only monitor registry changes there, but added files aren't hard to find if I know what to look for from the 32 bit VMs.
InstallWatch Pro works most efficiently when you've got more than one install to monitor -- the 1st snapshots take a while, but from then on it's pretty quick. It allows me to export plain text lists of files added, deleted, or modified, text lists of new, deleted, or modified registry entries, & lets me export .reg files of added &/or changed registry keys & values. I've found that MUCH more useful than any uninstall apps I've seen so far. I can edit the exported .reg files, or if they're complicated by a lot of garbage entries, export whatever keys using Regedit in the VM. I can often very easily create install or uninstall .reg files that I can save -- it's actually pretty simple [though it can be time consuming] to create a .reg file that removes keys when you double click it in Windows. If I want to add the app to my regular Windows install I can also reduce its normal amount of added registry bloat, sometimes by almost 100%... Context menus are cool, except when you have too many to easily wade through the right click menus, so I normally leave those out -- the same with filename extensions associated with whatever app. Coders use installation apps to get their software in place, & those installation apps very often add far more registry entries that the app itself ever uses -- since I know what to remove I don't need the uninstall stuff, so I leave that install/uninstall info out too.
But adding an app to Windows can be simpler than that... most apps are less complicated, & will add whatever they need to the registry on 1st run. Universal Extractor or 7-zip will often extract the individual program files from the setup file. That's useful for spotting stuff like toolbars, & may let you avoid a lot of bloat from the normal installation routine. You can try to run those extracted files more-or-less as-is in a VM to make sure it works if you want, rather than experimenting on your regular Windows install, & that way you can also monitor what files/folders & registry entries are added. You can do the same thing just saving the program's files once you install an app in your VM. Either way, monitoring the changes an app that hasn't been normally installed makes when you run it is the 1st step to making it portable, whichever methods or tools you use to do that.
What I do is record the install & 1st run as one step, record the activation or registration [when needed] as a 2nd, & that's helped me troubleshoot & fix problems where an app wouldn't install, or run, or activate/register in my regular Windows [most of the time doing that 2-step is a very slight waste of time, & everything works the way it should, but I won't actually know that until I try the install in regular Windows, & then it's too late -- if it didn't work I'd have to go back & monitor the install all over again, in 2 steps this time, so I just do it that way to start with]. I save the separate lists for what files are added & modified, & I save the files themselves -- I'll 7-zip the folders/files, naming the .7z file to reflect where its contents belong, e.g. UsrAppDta.7z, so I know at a glance where the files are that an app adds/uses. And I'll of course save any relevant .reg files.
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Uninstalling software can be more trouble than it's worth...
If an app uses .NET, the only way to get rid of the changes it's made to .NET is to completely remove & reinstall .NET, which is a HUGE PITA. There are a few versions of the Microsoft C/C++ runtime files that some apps use, & they may be added to the app's folder, added to Windows' system folder, or *installed* to Windows\ WinSxS folder. I usually try to avoid them -- I've by now got several copies of each & every version installed -- and uninstalling them from that WinSxS folder is at best impractical, at worst impossible. They're part of this huge gray area of shared files that are registered with Windows.
The way it's supposed to work is program A needs file Z so it looks in the registry & finds out where file Z is -- simple. But, program B may install a different version of file Z, which may be changed again when you install program C. Now if you uninstall program A, B, or C, you don't want to remove file Z [unless you remove all 3 apps], but mistakes happen, & removing one may indeed break the other two. Let's complicate it a bit more -- software looks in Windows' system folder for files when it doesn't know to look elsewhere, &/or when it can't find a file where it's supposed to be, so it's entirely possible that when you uninstall C, it removes the registry listing for file Z, but, the copy A installed is still in the system folder & used... that's cool, unless that version of Z that A installed is incompatible with some of your other software. Confused yet? Let's add another twist -- what if Windows comes with it's own version of file Z, which is part of a set of several files, but since Z was replaced, the original Windows version was never updated when the remainder of that file set were? If the replacement file Z is removed, IF Windows can & does revert to its own *obsolete* copy, what breaks then?
There are quite a few more *What IF* scenarios, but they all teach the same lesson -- adding or removing software can break stuff in unexpected ways. If adding an app can break something, so can removing one. That's what makes many uninstall routines & most uninstall apps less effective -- they are designed to *try* not to remove anything that *might* be shared, so you either have leftovers or they try but fail & you get something else broken.
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When software installation adds drivers...
When evaluating software there's one thing that counts as 2 1/2 strikes as far as I'm concerned, & that's when/if an app adds drivers... Most people think of things like video cards or chips &/or maybe printers & such when they think of drivers, but hardware actually makes up only a small part of the drivers installed in Windows -- most are for services, & many don't show up in the Administrative Tools -> Services applet. What's bad about drivers? They can tend to have compatibility problems, they start with Windows, and either incompatibility or an incomplete install or uninstall can break Windows so it won't start. Uninstall routines & uninstall apps tend to leave drivers in place, & sadly there's no good way to remove them that works 100% of the time. Sometimes they take over one or more functions from Windows.
One method that can work is to rename driver files, which you may only be able to do when that copy of Windows isn't running -- I like to add a "_" to the front of the file name -- & see if Windows starts... if it doesn't those files are at the top of a alphabetical directory or folder file list & can be easily changed back. Another method I use is to use Autoruns to find the driver, jump to the driver's registry key, note the name of the key & its service if it has one, then search in Regedit for the key name, the file name, & the service name, deleting everything I find. If it works, great -- if not, restore a backup of the registry. When practical I like to try either method using a VM 1st... While V/Box normally uses the .vdi format for their virtual hard drives, they can use .vhd files as well, which can be mounted in win7/8 to do stuff like rename any driver files that can't be re-named with Windows running -- when/if you have more than one V/Box VM, you can also attach the .vdi file for one VM to another, so it shows up as just another hard drive with files that can be renamed or moved or deleted.
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I try to avoid Windows Installer [.msi] setup files
I've learned the hard way to at the Very least set a Restore Point but preferably avoid Windows Installer when possible, perform a disk/partition image backup when not. When you run a .msi file you're completely at the mercy of the coder who wrote the install routine -- frankly whether your installed copy of Windows survives or is trashed is in their hands. Simplified, one problem is that there aren't enough checks & balances built in that would prevent the coder from doing something stupid through laziness or in error, and another problem is that Windows Installer is so integrated with Windows, that when some coder messes up it can break your other software &/or Windows so deeply that only a fresh Windows re-install will fix it. If you can find it, Microsoft's Windows Install Clean Up *may* help somewhat when that happens, but it's not a cure, & it can cause problems in win7, which is why Microsoft doesn't offer it any longer. Windows Install Clean Up was originally developed to fix .msi related problems with Office -- yes, even Microsoft's coders have screwed this stuff up.
When you run a .msi setup file a large number of new, separate registry entries are created, & because they're separate it can take a very long time to try & delete them manually, but you can delete them. Windows Install Clean Up is pretty much all you have that can clear some of the entries in Windows Installer's stored records.