Registry Cleaners on Mac?

I am a new Mac user (Macbook Pro 17", Sept. 2011). I recently installed Windows 7 on a separate HD partition, so now I have the best of both worlds (although I wish you could work between the two without having to restart).

For years I used a great free registry cleaner called ccleaner (Redirecting...) to clean up my PC. It deleted temp files, erased hours of web history, and scanned my registry for errors and then fixed them.

My question now that I have a Mac is, is it safe to download software like ccleaner on my Windows partition and use it without causing conflicts with the Mac machine and/or partition? Thanks.

Yes, CCleaner is perfectly safe to use on the Windows 7 side. I use it all the time. When you reboot to Windows 7, for all practical purposes you're now on a Windows machine albeit made by Apple. ;D Nothing run on the Windows 7 side including any AV software will interfere with OS X on the Mac side.

chscag said:

Yes, CCleaner is perfectly safe to use on the Windows 7 side. I use it all the time. When you reboot to Windows 7, for all practical purposes you're now on a Windows machine albeit made by Apple. ;D Nothing run on the Windows 7 side including any AV software will interfere with OS X on the Mac side.

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It made sense that this would be true, but I didn't want to assume and make a mess. So thank you for clarifying this for me.

Paul

And should yo want to use Windows & without booting, look at a software program called Parallel 7.


http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

harryb2448 said:

And should yo want to use Windows & without booting, look at a software program called Parallel 7.


Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac

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Have you used this program yourself? Bootcamp works fine, but it is an issue to keep rebooting. I have so many PC programs that I didn't want to go out and buy Mac ones. Too much $$. But I love the Mac interface. But it's hard to feel like I'm on a Mac when I'm still spending so much time on the PC partition.

I'm just curious if you've used Parallel 7 and if it's smooth and bug free?

well you can try out virtual box from oracle. that is what i use. it is free. if you then like the idea of virtual pc you can always upgrade to one of the purchased ones if you like.

I'll second the recommendation for VirtualBox. Parallels is a bit more refined, and graphics performance is amazing under it, but it has been criticized for being a bit prone to crashing. VirtualBox works well enough for the money, that's for sure.

I'll also recommend VirtualBox - I use it here quite a bit and it works great with Windows. That said, it's not the best for everything. What kinds of applications are you running in Windows?

Virtual machines (under VirtualBox, Parallels or VM Ware Fusion) work great for typical productivity applications (MS Office, web surfing, accounting, etc.). But they do not do well with programs (e.g., games or video/photo editing) that require 3D graphics or otherwise require native access to graphics hardware. That's because the virtual machine uses a "virtual" graphics adapter that will limit performance. If your Mac uses Intel integrated graphics, that might not make a big difference, but if it has a separate graphics card it's something you need to know.

I use VM's all the time for Windows and Linux but I'm not a gamer. If you already have a boot camp installation of windows, you can use that to create a virtual machine and try it out. VirtualBox is free, and both Parallels and Fusion have free trial periods, so it should be quite easy for you to see if these work for your particular needs.

Cheers