Registry cleaning for several Windows accounts?

General Discussion (off topic) Anything and everyt
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Well, I recently installed CCleaner since everybody says it’s good. Not because my Windows wasn’t running smooth though so no special problem. I had used EasyCleaner before but CC seems much more thorough. I normally run Windows (XP) as limited user so I always run these things as admin to make sure they have the proper permission to edit the registry.

Since CCleaner can also delete various superfluous files I tried running it as my usual account to clear junk files in it, and then for no special reason tried also scanning the registry from that account. It detected lots of broken entries. I had never tried to run EasyCleaner as limited user but when I did it detected even more.

Now I’m thinking, is this as I think because the files referred to in these entries are off limits for a limited account, and so the registry cleaner thinks that these files don’t exist and the entries are broken, even though the files do exist and the entries aren’t broken, as the cleaner finds when run properly as admin? ???

The bottom line is, does running these registry cleaning programs from an admin account clean the whole of the registry for all accounts? Thanks. :slight_smile:

EDIT: Just after posting this I thought of a way to investigate. I logged in as admin and granted my usual account admin permission temporarily. Then run CCleaner as the usually limited now admin user, and found nothing. So I guess this pretty much answers my question. However I’d still appreciate input from people who know stuff about this.

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The bottom line is, does running these registry cleaning programs from an admin account clean the whole of the registry for all accounts?
I think the only caveat to that would be if you have disabled the hidden administrative shares by editing the registry as such. But I could be wrong on that.

At any rate, in general it’s my understanding that doing something like this as an Admin cleans everything up, where as a Limited User doesn’t have the necessary access. That’s part of the reason one must be careful when using registry cleaners…

LM

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Now I’m pretty sure, my main concern was that regedit shows only LM (local machine) and CU (current user) even to an admin. But I guess that’s only the way it’s shown classified in folders whereas an admin account has overall access to the files that make up the registry. Thanks.

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Off Topic split renamed and moved here.