I'm trying to help my grandpa with his HP laptop, which hasn't been used in a while. He has a Ryzen 5 7000 and Radeon graphics, meant for graphic design, but he's been told it has 5000 registry errors by Norton Utilities. I'm suspicious that this might just be a ploy by Norton to sell him more products, especially since he already pays them about $200 a year for identity protection and antivirus services. My grandpa can be quite stubborn, so I want to approach this delicately without overwhelming him with too much tech talk. Given that we cleared up old files and there's only 20 MB of space used now, I'm wondering if these 5000 registry entries are actually a problem. His laptop seemed to perform fine when we were using a USB 2.0 SD card reader to look at old photos. Could it really be that bad? Is there a practical way for me to clean or manage these registry entries without spending extra money?
2 Answers
Honestly, I'd recommend removing Norton since it's pretty much just bloatware at this point. The claim of 5000 registry errors is likely exaggerated. Most of those entries are probably harmless or leftover from software he's uninstalled. Rather than stressing about the registry, I suggest switching to Windows Defender for basic protection and maybe adding Malwarebytes as a one-time scanner. Just stick to routine disk cleanup and avoid messing with the registry unless you have backups in place.
I'd love to help him ditch Norton, but he's pretty wary of changes. He tends to think what he has is enough, even if it isn't effective.
You're not alone in thinking Norton isn't great. Many tech guys agree that the software often overstates problems like registry entries. Just having orphaned registry keys isn't a significant issue. For instance, if he had installed Blender and then uninstalled it, the leftover registry entries are just remnants that don't cause any harm. Plus, Windows doesn't pay attention to those old keys. Honestly, the last time I used a registry cleaner was decades ago, so I wouldn't stress about it.
What’s the deal with disk imaging software that makes it necessary to manage the registry differently?