My XP install has some obvious registry problems ranging from buttons not rendering right in some windows to the system not really powering down/restarting but hanging at the "shutting down" screen.
There's a bajillion registry programs for cleaning and repairing but I'm not sure what to use or which ones are malicious or not. The registry is a [i]scary[/i] place and right now I can not afford downtime on my system.
if you can't afford downtime you shouldn't use a program to 'clean up' what you don't understand
[QUOTE=Roo-kie;28448284]if you can't afford downtime you shouldn't use a program to 'clean up' what you don't understand[/QUOTE]
That was meant as I don't want to fuss about reinstalling windows as the easiest alternative for fixing my problem. At least not right now.
How do you know it's a registry problem? The rendering issues could be coming from some program drawing something badly or repetitively causing GDI to take priority there leaving other elements rendering poorly.
Shutting down could be caused by a program or service refusing to shut down.
And a reg cleaner wouldn't help because all they do is find values that point to no longer existing items and/or values with improper syntax.
[QUOTE=Panda X;28448421]How do you know it's a registry problem? The rendering issues could be coming from some program drawing something badly or repetitively causing GDI to take priority there leaving other elements rendering poorly.
Shutting down could be caused by a program or service refusing to shut down.
And a reg cleaner wouldn't help because all they do is find values that point to no longer existing items and/or values with improper syntax.[/QUOTE]
Can't answer your first two questions but thank you for confirming for me that a registry cleaner or fixer is just something that "ties up the loose ends".
Actually, three programs that suffer from improperly rendering window elements are Google earth, VLC, and Sonic Stage. Reasons as to why the system is not properly shutting down is a mystery. Nothing was installed or uninstalled before it started happening so it's possibly something went AWOL.
Hanging during shutdown can possibly be fixed with the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service. XP is notorious for hanging during shutdown, UPHClean might be able to fix it [url]http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b286e6d-8912-4e18-b570-42470e2f3582&displaylang=en[/url] I have it installed on one of my PCs, it doesn't interfere with anything.
It seems that there was a random update for XP that assessed certain instances where the system would not send the signal to the system to power off or restart. That seems to be fixed now.
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