Could someone please explain the Severity column?


I have used PT before when it was freeware, which was awhile ago and don't remember any such column. It was either safe or not safe.


In this version, PT Lite there is no explaination.


I gather a full red bar is very severe. But what does that mean?

There is also shaded red bar and also degrees of how long the bar is.


BTW I'm using normal scanning method. Thanks...


I know it's freeware but give us a break, a popup, an online manuel, something....

The severity means the theoretical probability that the specific item can cause a problem with your system. So in other words, if you have a high severity item it is more likely to have a visible effect on your computer than a low severity item.


You can use this information to both get an idea of the general well being of your registry, or in a critical environment by only fixing the most critical issues and leave the less critical issues not fixed to reduce the small probability of the fix causing a problem itself (a case of false positive).

Thank you very much for the reply. Much appreciated.


When I was using ME OS, PT was wonderful. Really improved my system.


These days reg cleaners are not needed as much. So I'm wondering, since reg cleaners could probably do more harm than actually improving system performance with today's pc's,... could I assume they are made to scan very safely on the whole?


If I'm scanning in normal mode with PT lite, would it be safe to say I could fix all that it finds? Without it totally crashing my system? I realize that it might have some possible ill effects on a program or two,.. but as long as it doesn't crash the whole system I could use the backup or system restore. Would this be safe to say? Again thanks for the reply.

4 days later

ohbaby wrote

These days reg cleaners are not needed as much. So I'm wondering, since reg cleaners could probably do more harm than actually improving system performance with today's pc's,... could I assume they are made to scan very safely on the whole?

I cannot say much about other registry cleaners, except that most of them are just trash. But PowerTools (both jv16 and Lite) are very safe to use. It has always been my policy that safety comes first, there is no point in running a registry cleaner that is designed to fix problems, if it sometimes could cause problems.


You might be interested to read this: http://www.macecraft.com/registry_cleaner_comparison2/ it's a test we did earlier this year, it shows how some registry cleaners can do more harm than good.

ohbaby wrote

If I'm scanning in normal mode with PT lite, would it be safe to say I could fix all that it finds? Without it totally crashing my system? I realize that it might have some possible ill effects on a program or two,.. but as long as it doesn't crash the whole system I could use the backup or system restore. Would this be safe to say? Again thanks for the reply.

Yes, this is very safe. In the very rare cases that something goes wrong, simply restoring the backup automatically created by the program fixes the problems.