Thank you very much for your help on my Search Engine Hijacked
question. Your input helped me in trying a variety of solutions. I’m
not really sure which one finally did it but all the clean up should
help with other system-clogging messes as well.

I’ve closed the other question but I want to recognize that you
helped. Tell me what is your favorite preventative maintenance tool or
your most interesting recovery story.

Thanks again,

czh

czh...

Thank you for the question. My favorite preventive maintenance tool
is a sub-program in the Fix-It Utilities suite of tools. One of the
18 utilities included in the suite is called Registry Fixer. It does
a scan of your entire registry and looks for invalid entries, entries
which refer to files which have been moved, and much more. It then
gives you the opportunity to either delete the invalid entries or 
point them toward the correct location of the file(s), which it 
detects automatically. If you want a closer look at the entry, or
want to edit it manually, it allows you to open and edit the
entry in question.

This is especially helpful in ferreting out entries based on
programs which have been either correctly uninstalled but have
left behind orphan entries, or programs which have been deleted
from Windows Explorer, manually, or by 'sniffer' programs like
Ad-Aware, which, as you know, seeks out unwelcome programs and
eliminates them. In any of these cases, the programs can leave
behind useless debris in the registry which slows down Windows
by adding bulk to the registry and causing Windows to take longer
in scanning the registry during normal operations.

Once the debris is removed, you can scan again and find other
entries which were based on the ones just removed, and remove
those as well, repeating this until the scan comes up clean.

This trims and consolidates the registry and allows for 
quicker operation.

Made by VCOM, you can read more about Fix-It Utilities
comprehensive suite of tools here:
http://www.v-com.com/product/fi_ind.html

And check out the reviews here:
http://www.v-com.com/review/Fix-It_Reviews.html

Trust me, they're not exaggerating!
It's truly as sweet a suite as you'll find.


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sublime1-ga


Searches done, via Google:

Fix-It utilities
://www.google.com/search?q=Fix-It+utilities

Thanks very much.
czh