jonm wroteThe scan finally completed. It doesn't show the final Values Analyzed nor the final Keys Analyzed but has a total at the bottom of the window of 140394.
The system is a desktop Vaio Pentium 4, 2.6 GHz, with 512MB RAM. It is running Windows XP Pro (SP2, Build 2600).
I'd attach report windows but I'm not totally sure yet how to display them and don't know how much time it would take to get them displayed (and then transferred to this machine that I'm emailing from).
140,000 plus! I wonder if that's a record ...
Your PC has about the same power as my 3 year old notebook. It's not surprising it took so long to generate a Registry Cleaner list that size.
I think we know what the problem is (a really large list of probable errors), so you don't need to post screenshots. For future use, you may want to visit http://www.imageshack.us/ and find the tools Quickload and Quickshot which make it fairly easy.
If I had an error list that large, I think I would clean it up in sections by doing partial scans. For example:
1. Make sure you have Power Tools backup turned on in Settings, then make several Registry Cleaner (RC) runs with options set as follows:
2. Run1 -- check Quick select: aggressive to turn on all the scans, uncheck the first five and last two scans, then do 11
3. Run2 -- check the fifth scan (HKCC), then do 11
4. Run3 -- uncheck HKCC, check the third scan (HKCL), then do 11
5. Run4 -- uncheck HKCL, check the first scan (HKLM), then do 11
6. Run5 -- consider doing steps 6, 1, 2, and 3 of the "shortcut" described here
7. Run6 -- uncheck HKLM, check the fourth scan (HKCU), then do 11
8. Run7 -- uncheck HKCU, check the second scan (HKUS), then do 11
9. Run8 -- check the MRU scan, then do 11
10. Run 9 -- check Quick select: normal, then do 11
11. Start Registry Cleaner; wait; examine the list and select lines to be removed -- if the list is large, click the "Error description" column head to sort by error type and select one error type group at a time; before actually clicking the Remove button, scan the selection and unselect items you want to investigate further later; then click the Remove button; if removing groups of items, continue doing that, otherwise resume at the next Run.
