PL intervenes, but program that caused it not indentified

[johnw]

hello jeremy,
I ran a registry scanning program - the sort that find erroneous entries in the windows registry, the process is very CPU intensive and the CPU usage goes  to 100% for a time. PL steps in to restrain things(or so I thought)  PL log (for that time) does not show that program  only my web browser and that was not using many CPU cycles, yet PL does not show this program or process. Adding the CPU usage from the ones it lists shows only a tiny amount of CPU being used! Can PL please identify CPU hungry processes and show them in the graphical and process list displays in a future version? I read a previous post that you answered about missing process and you explained that it was because PL cant control that process does this mean that PL was not restraining the registry cleaning process?

[Jeremy Collake]

First, I'd not recommend using any application to clean or find erroneous entries in the registry, but if you choose to do so, that is fine. They typically cause more problems than they solve. Maybe running one every year or so would be useful if you've installed and uninstalled lots of applications that may have left erroneous registry values, but otherwise they are useless. The presence of any leftover registry values doesn't degrade performance in 99.9% of cases. The whole industry is really a scam, imho. They usually end up deleting registry values that were important to something, as they have no reliable way to really know if a registry value is important. They make their best guess, which sometimes isn't a very good guess. Only in the rarest of cases do they improve performance... basically only in theoretical cases that I've never seen in the real world.

I wrote RegBench to help benchmark registry access performance and third-party testing showed no benefit to registry cleaning/repair utilities. The only very marginal benefit was from rebuilding the registry hives from scratch, which some utilities can do. This was exactly what was predicted - that only rebuilding the hives from scratch could yield any improvement. Even then, the benefit is small, and only present if the registry hives were highly fragmented (had a lot of insert and delete operations on it).

Anyway, to answer your question:
Try v3.99.9 alpha if you want, and install/run it with 'Highest rights' (asked during the install process). This may help the situation... maybe.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner. I hope this helps, if not elaborate on what software it is you're using and I can take a closer look.

[johnw]

Dear jeremy, there's no need to apologize for your delayed response, I know you are heavily involved in bringing Process Lasso to version 4 so you probably have little time to spare. I took your advise and tried the development edition of Process Lasso, (Process Lasso 3.99.9 alpha), and whilst I've only been trying it for the last hour (since I installed it) it's obvious it's been greatly improved. The problem I posted about (this thread) is eliminated and all programs which I've tried to slow the system  to test Process Lasso 3.99.9a, PL  has identified and dealt with appropriately. Process Lasso 3.99.9a's interface looks similar to its previous version  but it's obvious a lot of refinements have taken place to its engine. Good luck with this fine project.

As an aside, the registry cleaner I referred to above was reg Organizer v.5.1. One of the better ones I believe.