Registry Cleaners Taking A Long Time Scanning Vista x64....

Bowen · Jun 18, 2007

I'm using a couple registry cleaners and they both take a long time scanning! I'm talking hours and hours. I'm using Wise Registry Cleaner and I'm also using a demo version of TweakNow's RegCleaner Pro. Both are Vista x64 certified and both work, but I've yet to let them run through a complete cycle. They don't stall or stop, but when they get to the Wow6432Node registry keys, it takes FOREVER to scan. As I said before, it takes hours! I'm not exaggerating at all either. I've waited two hours before I stopped it and hit delete the safe keys, thinking maybe it would take a shorter time next time, but no luck so far.

I'm starting to wonder if my Vista x64 install is borked or something. The only trouble I'm having with Vista x64 is with some Creative drivers for my X-Fi....no biggie really...just Creative's problem, not Windows I don't think. The other one is IE7 and Windows Messenger Live! giving me a Werfault when I have two separate IE7 browser windows open, it causes Messenger to shut down, but that's it.

I don't see how something can be wrong with my system that would take it hours to go through. I don't have that many programs at all on windows! I just built this computer about 2 months ago and I am dual booting with Vista x64 and XP on two separate partitions of course. Why in the world is it taking so long to scan through this Wow6432Node key? I know it's some sort of reflector for 32-bit programs under Vista 64-bit, why so many keys?? I just want to make sure nothing is wrong here. I don't see how anything could be, but ya never know. When I do a quick scan with RegCleaner Pro, it only takes a few seconds, but when I do a full scan, it takes hours. I'm going to leave it on all night and see if it's still going in the morning. If I scan with Wise Registry Cleaner, it does the same thing, but if I uncheck scanning the software section, it only takes a couple minutes to scan the registry because it skips the Wow6432Node key.

I just want to know if something is wrong....is this typical or if there's a way to speed things up. I have a Core 2 Quad Q6600, Asus P5B-E mobo, 4GB of Corsair XMS PC5400 RAM, GeForce 8800 GTX, SB X-Fi sound card.

As of right now, it's been scanning for and hour and it's scanned 4250000 value's and counting. In WinXP, when I had the same install for 2 years going, the longest it ever took was maybe 3 minutes using any any registry scanners including RegCleaner and I had ALLOT of programs installed. If anyone can shed some light on this, that'd be great!

BTW, both Wise Registry Cleaner and TweakNow's RegCleaner Pro both claim to work with Vista x64. I've stopped the scanning after a couple hours and let it delete the "safe" entries it had found so far and rebooted to make sure everything was still working fine and I haven't found any problems....it's just taking a looooooong time to scan and I want to know why....thanx

Brink · Jun 21, 2007

Hi Bowen,

First, Welcome to the Forum.

I used Wise registry cleaner for quite awhile now and noticed that this started on mine as well starting with the last updated version they did. I never had this problem with Wise before either. I had to uncheck the Software section option for the scan to complete. This was true even on a fresh install of Vista too. I sent a bug report to Wise on it the other day, but haven't heard anything from them yet. I would keep a eye out on their website for a new update, and perhaps they'll have it fixed then. I would suspect that TweakNow's RegCleaner has a similiar Software option that would need to be unchecked as well.

I would uncheck it and wait for a updated version.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Bowen · Jun 22, 2007

brink said:
Hi Bowen,

First, Welcome to the Forum.

I used Wise registry cleaner for quite awhile now and noticed that this started on mine as well starting with the last updated version they did. I never had this problem with Wise before either. I had to uncheck the Software section option for the scan to complete. This was true even on a fresh install of Vista too. I sent a bug report to Wise on it the other day, but haven't heard anything from them yet. I would keep a eye out on their website for a new update, and perhaps they'll have it fixed then. I would suspect that TweakNow's RegCleaner has a similiar Software option that would need to be unchecked as well.

I would uncheck it and wait for a updated version.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

First, thanks for welcoming me and for responding! Anyway I have good news in that, we're not in alone and you're right....TweakNow's RegCleaner Pro does the exact same thing! I emailed them and they did get back to me and said they'd try to fix it in their next release. I think I'll email Wise as well so that they'll see more people are having a problem with it.

What's even strangers is that a previous version of Wise that I had installed didn't do this either, so I uninstalled the newer version and reinstalled the older one and wouldn't you know it, the older one started doing the same thing just as soon as I tried it! I wonder if there was some update from MS that triggered this or something because I had used Wise's registry cleaner 2 or 3 times prior to the problem and it scanned everything quite fast until a few days ago.

At any rate, I feel much better knowing that I'm not alone and I've spoken with a few people now that has this problem too. I'm pretty sure too, that this is a Vista x64 problem only and not a Vista x32 as I don't believe it has the Wow6432Node keys since it's only 32-bit and doesn't need a 32-bit reflector like the 64-bit version of Vista does.

This is a little OT, but I'm very glad I chose to get the x64 version of Vista over the x32 version. I just got a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop and of course it came with Vista....x32 though....they don't offer x64, otherwise I would have gotten it. Anyway, I can't get it to run BF2142 or BF2 for the life of me. It doesn't have a great video card in it as it has a Radeon X1400 Mobility, but I've been able to run HL2/CSS, UT2004, CoH, CoD2....basically any game I've tried on it has worked and ran very well with a res of 1280x800 with medium detail settings. BF2142 and BF2 are the ONLY games I can't seem to run on it, while on my desktop I haven't found anything that won't run on Vista x64 yet. I haven't tried the original DOOM yet on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it worked, despite the fact that it's a 16-bit program and Vista x64 is only supposed to support 32 and 64-bit programs.

Anyway, I'll email Wise and see if they'll respond. All these guys have got to do something because 64-bit is the future and I believe Vista x64 will really drive 64-bit computing unlike XP x64.

Brink · Jun 22, 2007

Bowen,

To get the older version of Wise to work again, you may need to do a thorough registry and hard drive search for Wise. I believe there is a left over settings data file in your username AppData area and a few registry entries after a uninstall. This will be picked up by the old Wise Reg. Cleaner when it's installed and will revert to those settings. Anyway, I hope they update it soon to. I'm not to concerned about it for now. I mostly use it as a reference to check for invaled registry entries and manually edit them myself.

OT, :D

I like the x64 Vista better as well. Although I wish more support for it will hurry up and catch up with it. So far, I had no problems with it either.

Regards,
Shawn

Bowen · Jun 22, 2007

brink said:
Bowen,

To get the older version of Wise to work again, you may need to do a thorough registry and hard drive search for Wise. I believe there is a left over settings data file in your username AppData area and a few registry entries after a uninstall. This will be picked up by the old Wise Reg. Cleaner when it's installed and will revert to those settings. Anyway, I hope they update it soon to. I'm not to concerned about it for now. I mostly use it as a reference to check for invaled registry entries and manually edit them myself.

OT, :D

I like the x64 Vista better as well. Although I wish more support for it will hurry up and catch up with it. So far, I had no problems with it either.

Regards,
Shawn

Thanks, I'll have to uninstall it and do that. I thought the days of manually editing registry entries were over, but apparently not. Just today, I had to do remove an entry. I installed Adaware 2007, but apparently it's not fully Vista compatible (or at least Vista x64) and even after you delete it a screen comes up saying that it can't find lsdelete which is part of Adaware. Even when you run registry cleaners, it won't get rid of it. You have to manually delete the Lavasoft entries as well as edit the lsdelete line in the bootexecute value. Only then will it stop.

Brink · Jun 22, 2007

Yeah Bowen,

The Adaware 2007 is for x32 only for now. The x64 is still in beta testing. I expect it shouldn't be long for a official release. I haven't seen a new beta release in a month now as a beta tester. ??

Shawn

Bowen · Jun 23, 2007

brink said:
Yeah Bowen,

The Adaware 2007 is for x32 only for now. The x64 is still in beta testing. I expect it shouldn't be long for a official release. I haven't seen a new beta release in a month now as a beta tester. ??

Shawn

Cool, thanks. I had a rude awakening when I wasn't thinking and I for some dumb reason though all my utilities would work on Vista x64 that I used on XP. For example, I really screwed Vista up when I was using my favorite registry cleaner in XP, which was jvPowerTools and when I ran it in Vista, the next time I rebooted....well let's just say it never rebooted again until I formatted the hard drive! To make matters worse, I booted into XP (dual-booting with XP and Vista) and I don't know if you know this or not, but when you dual-boot with Vista and XP, it screws up the other OS's system restore. For example, say you have a months worth of restore points saved in System Restore, but as soon as you go into XP, it wipes out every last one of them! The same thing occurs if you spent most of your time in XP and decided to go into Vista....it wipes all the XP restore points out. I don't think this has anything do with 32-bit vs 64-bit, but rather a MS screwup. In fact that's where I read about it....from a MS article.

I'm so close to formatting my XP partition because there's really no point in going back to XP now. Anyway, back on topic....TuneUp Utilities 2007 has a great registry cleaner for Vista x32 and x64 so until the others get their act together, I highly recommend it! It does a deep clean too, not just a quick scan. That said, you can do a quick scan, if you so choose to.

Brink · Jun 23, 2007

Bowen,

Sorry, (LOL). At least you learned something out of it. Always double check the registry cleaner's results before letting it run amok in your registry. I had one wipe me out before to. That's why I went back to manually editing the registry and using the Reg. programs as a reference. It take's longer, but you will never have to worry about the program messing you up. Now if I can only prevent myself from messing it up. (haha)

I would get rid of the XP partition and make your hard drive whole again, or use that partition to store your system restores and backup files. I read nothing but problems with a dual boot and Vista.

I'll would try the TuneUp Utilities, but I'm cheap and always prefer the freebies. What can I say, I refuse to pay to be a beta tester. (LOL)

Shawn

Bowen · Jun 23, 2007

brink said:
Bowen,

Sorry, (LOL). At least you learned something out of it. Always double check the registry cleaner's results before letting it run amok in your registry. I had one wipe me out before to. That's why I went back to manually editing the registry and using the Reg. programs as a reference. It take's longer, but you will never have to worry about the program messing you up. Now if I can only prevent myself from messing it up. (haha)

I would get rid of the XP partition and make your hard drive whole again, or use that partition to store your system restores and backup files. I read nothing but problems with a dual boot and Vista.

I'll would try the TuneUp Utilities, but I'm cheap and always prefer the freebies. What can I say, I refuse to pay to be a beta tester. (LOL)

Shawn

I think I am gonna get rid of XP and just keep that partition for data, but first, before I format that partition, how do I get rid of that screen that says Earlier version of Windows or Windows Vista? I went to look in the boot.ini file, but in it I saw that it says Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options. How exactly do I open it up? It just flashes on the screen for a second if I open it Vista. Thanks

Brink · Jun 23, 2007

Bowen,

I don't know, but maybe this link might help you with it. Other than wiping the whole thing out.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2014/vista_using_bcdedit_boot_up_options_dual_boot_xp_prof

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Bowen · Jun 24, 2007

brink said:
Bowen,

I don't know, but maybe this link might help you with it. Other than wiping the whole thing out.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2014/vista_using_bcdedit_boot_up_options_dual_boot_xp_prof

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks. Well I got rid of XP. I tried to format the partition it was on, but Vista wouldn't let me, so I tried to delete all the files and directories and it would only let me do some. So I thought I'd outsmart it and put the Vista DVD in and format it that way and I did. I had a little surprise though when I went to boot up. It said something about it not finding a bootloader and to press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart and I did and the same message came up again.

Then I started Vista install again and selected to repair the computer and it said it found errors in Vista and when it was finished it should restart with the errors fixed. Well, it restarted, but nothing was fixed. By this time, I was pretty angry at myself because I forgot that I installed XP first then Vista, so it makes sense that when I completely got rid of XP without first editing Vista's Bootexecute file, it screwed it up completely. The thing is, I was going to do that after I formatted the HD, bu I forgot that XP had the vital info. Anyway, I tried once more with the repair with the Vista DVD and this time, it came up differently. It showed what version of Vista I had and then it let me select a template of problems to choose from. I of course chose the start up problems and it ran again, and looked just like it did before. It rebooted and boom, it fixed it!

I nearly screwed everything up but doing things too fast! I installed XP first because it has a different boot loader than Vista and I read pretty much everywhere that, that is the way it should be done (XP then Vista) if you're going to dual-boot. So all is well now and my end goal was achieved....and that is, I got rid of the bootloader screen....the hard way....lol.

Brink · Jun 24, 2007

Bowen,

LOL....

Oh well, at least you learn more through the hard way. Glad to hear it's all ok now.

Shawn

Bowen · Jun 24, 2007

I've got great news and fix for ALL registry cleaners. Of course you still need a reg cleaner with Vista x64 support, but that goes without saying....but still...those that are new to Vista x64 or computers in general, might miss that. Anyway...on to the fix. Forgive me when I state things that you already know how to do, but again...this is for those that are not familar with Vista x64 or just new to computers.

You need to edit the registry by going to the RUN command line in the Start menu and type in regedit. Then go to \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Wow6432Node

What you want to do is completely delete the second Wow6432Node key. It is the one that ends with Internet Explorer in it. After your done, it should now look like this: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node. You just get rid of the second key and that's it!

Of course make sure you make a backup of the registry first...ALWAYS do this when you're editing the registry! I simply used System Restore, but you can always just export the registry itself to a USB key or a CD etc.

I tested it out and not only could I use TweakNow's RegCleaner Pro, but any that are certified for Vista x64 of course!

Brink · Jun 24, 2007

Bowen,

You genius! Wise Registry Cleaner works perfectly now.

I noticed that the sub keys did not contain any data at all on mine on the duplicate Wow6432Node Key. I wonder if it was a Windows Update or some other program that duplicated the Wow6432Node Key. ??? I know I sure didn't do it. (haha)

You should go to the tips tutorial section and post a New Tutorial on this. If you need help with the Turorial, I'll be happy to help you with it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/

Thank You,
Shawn

Bowen · Jun 24, 2007

brink said:
Bowen,

You genius! Wise Registry Cleaner works perfectly now.

I noticed that the sub keys did not contain any data at all on mine on the duplicate Wow6432Node Key. I wonder if it was a Windows Update or some other program that duplicated the Wow6432Node Key. ??? I know I sure didn't do it. (haha)

You should go to the tips tutorial section and post a New Tutorial on this. If you need help with the Turorial, I'll be happy to help you with it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/

Thank You,
Shawn

As tempted as as I am to take the credit.....sigh...it wasn't me that figured it out. Here's the person who should take the credit and actually I'm not sure if he actually figured it out himself or got it from someone else as well. Anyway, here's the person and the post I created in another forum.

They guy's name is "bugfree" and here is the forum. Registry Cleaners Taking A Long Time Scanning Vista x64.... - TechNet Forums

Brink · Jun 24, 2007

Bowen,

Here's the link for the Tip post I created for everyone, thanks to you and bugfree. Take a look and see if you approve of it.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/73011-registry-cleaner-program-slow.html#post358018

Shawn

Bowen · Jun 25, 2007

WOW! That's far more credit than I deserve Shawn! But you did put the link to give bugfree the credit too....nice! Yeah, the tip looks awesome! The screenshot you took is far more helpful than just seeing the fix. This isn't a hard fix by no means, but ya know when you're dealing with the registry, you don't want to mess around and you want to make absolutely certain that your doing the right thing! Your tool tip should even allow n00bs to be able to edit the registry. I'm glad you put that warning in there too....ya never know. Oh, more thing you might want to add and this is up to you. You know the export feature in the registry. You might want to tell them about that too. If you were to export the registry and then put it on a USB key or a CD/DVD something...that's just another form of backup to do and if something were really screwed up, they could just import that back into the registry to fix it. That is of course if they could even boot the computer. Actually now that I think about it, maybe you should just leave it off....too many options might confuse some people. The most important thing is to back it up via system restore! The only question left that comes to mind is why hasn't Microsoft fixed this and when? Do you happen to know where I can email MS for them to fix this?

This is OT, but I wonder if you could help me with one other problem in Vista x64? It's not a great big deal, but it bothers me. When I have two separate IE7 Browser windows open and try to open MSN Messenger Live or if I already have Messenger open and then open up two IE7 browser windows, I get a Werfault and Messenger closes. I also get an error with IE7 too sometimes and don't have anything to do with MSN Messenger.

Now, it's not a real big deal because I use Firefox most of the time and clearly, that's the correct call considering what IE7 is doing. I believe I looked in Event Viewer and I believe it said something about DEP (Data Execution Protection) being involved and I so I disabled DEP on IE7, but it had no effect in helping the problem. It wouldn't let me disable DEP on MSN Messenger though. I'd just like to know how to stop this.

I use IE7 once in a while when something might not work with Firefox....I'm sure you probably do the same thing even if you normally use IE, you probably use Firefox for others when something doesn't work, like a streaming video or whatnot. Let me know if you've got a work around for this....it's driving me crazy!

Brink · Jun 25, 2007

BOWEN,

Glad you like and approve of the tip. I am currently working with Wise on helping them on the x64 Vista platform by testing some updated program code they are sending me. When I ran it, it scanned just fine with both Wow6432Node key entries included in the registry. I would expect a updated verion to be released sometime soon on their web site.

For the OT: (haha)

I'm using Live Messenger Beta (Build 8.5.1238.0601) and have no problems with having more than one IE7 window at a time with Messenger open. With that said, it sounds more like a possible add-on to IE7 or Messenger that might be triggering the DEP stop error. Check those, but you can disable DEP completely to most likely resolve the problem. You can always turn it back on if it doesn't help.

Here's the link:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/65790-dep-data-execution-prevention.html

Scroll down to this section:

How to Enable/Disable DEP:
5. To Disable: (Optin/OptOut options above)

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Bowen · Jun 25, 2007

Thanks and thanks for the links. Since it's not a big deal and since you're using a new MSN Messenger Live beta, I'll try that too. I don't think it's worth turning DEP completely off since I only use IE7 occasionally. Well it looks like registry companies are fixing the problem...that's great! So maybe this isn't a problem with Vista after all, but rather with the programs that aren't optimized for it then.

Registry Cleaners Taking A Long Time Scanning Vista x64....

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