Some Registry Cleaners only do what the Bad Link Vac does.  One user wrote me and pointed out that one of these registry cleaners listed more entries than RegVac.  When I checked it out, I found out that it only did what this Bad Link Vac does.  But that registry cleaner was also deceptive.  It listed some keys twice.  This is because all of the keys in the registry except those under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS are duplicate keys to keys in these two main keys.  When I compared the real numbers, the Bad Link Vac came up with more entries.

You can find out how many bad links are in your registry by clicking on the "Find Bad Links" button.  The Vac will find all filenames in the registry that refer to a file on your harddrive that does not exist, except for those which are in the software sections of the registry (the Software Vac will find them).  No changes will be made to the registry by just clicking this button.

Just because an entry is listed here does not mean that it is a bad entry, even though most are.  Some programs like to put future locations of files and directories that will only exist once you use one of its features.

This is why it is only for Advanced users.  To use this tool properly you must use the Show Key button at the bottom and check each entry out.  Then to really do it right, you will need to determine how much of the parent key should be removed. 

When you click on the Clean Checked Items, the checked items are removed from the registry.

The Verified as Good button will remove the entries that you have verified from the list but not from the registry.  Once you have verified that an entry is good and should not be removed from the registry, select it and press this button.  This will remove it from this list and keep it off of this list.  When you click on "Find Bad Links" again, it will not list these entries.  These entries are kept in the verified.ini file.  You can modify that file with Notepad or you can delete it to once again list all entries with bad links.

 

The "Find and Clean Bad Links as part of Automated Scans" checkbox lets you include the Bad Link Vac in the automated scans.