Finally found a registry cleaner I would recommend!

[mod 135640]

Most of the registry cleaners are useless and can do more harm than good. I have actually seen computers blue screen, slow down and really do bad things after using some of these so called "registry cleaners" so I have never recommended them in the past.

 

Usually I would say.. "Back up your shit and format the hard drive for a fresh install of windows".

 

Now I have a new tool to work with first.

 

I recently had a P4 computer come to me that was running very slow. this was a business computer that the XP install was original and from when they first released XP ... It was a mess of partially uninstalled programs and all sorts of stuff. The owner did not have copies of all his software so he really did not want to format the drive (it's hard to find a copy of lotus 123 these days!).

 

I updated the bios, malware/spyware removed, all new up to date drivers, etc.. ran the windows update so it was all up to date and still no luck so I asked some fellow geek friends what they suggest as I tried everythign I knew of to fix this short of formatting and starting over.

 

I only got one suggestion other than "format" and it was a FREE program called mace craft (http://www.macecraft.com/). I have had bad experiences with registry cleaners and compression tools in the past buy I was assured this would make a big difference so I tried it. what did we have to loose at this point.

 

To my surprise it did work - and well. The computer was noticeably faster when I ran the registry cleaner and the registry compression tool. It has some more tools as well like a system optimizer that does some pre-load memory tricks so I ran and played with those tools as well until the system was running better than new.

 

Usually a system slows down due to spyware/malware these days and also the antivirus programs are really heavy on the system resources.

 

Make sure you clean out the spyware/malware as your first step if your system is slow but if that does not work this program would be on my list of things to try.

[A***** A***** 510]

I might just try this as well, thanks for posting the link!

[capitalman 3861]

Well I probably have the worst POS computer around here, so I decided to run this thing. Seemed to work!

 

It found well over 1500 crappy old registry entries and other crap and now I'm about 100% quicker.

 

Mod, you da man!

[mod 135640]

Good to hear. The optimization tools (one pre-loads stuff into your computers memory on boot) really seam to help as well. It has a number of useful tools that actually seam to work.

[corona 265]

The best registry cleaner is a Mac, cleans it right out, never have to run it again :grin:

[mod 135640]

LOL... Good point. (True with any *nix based machine)

[Guest S*rca****sid]

If you're looking for something free.... CCleaner is very good too.

[RubJunky 1954]

Although I can't compete with MOD's expertise, I do have some options for those who wish to unbloat their OS. I use NOD32 for all my anti-virus, email, MS crap scanning its very small on resources but very powerful when it comes to catching viruses. You get auto updates during your subscription. I use AtGuard as a firewall, AtGuard was developped many years ago by a net guru and placed online as freeware for many years. One day Nortons came along and gave him millions for the code to implement AtGuard into their suite of softwares. Nortons in their infinite wisdom destroyed the software by adding and tweaking it to the point that AtGuard is now useless under the Nortons banner. Well my friends the net guru has come back to life with an updated version after many years of partying and now released AtGuard 3.3. Google it and try it.

 

To monitor registries... I use RegRun Gold... its the best i've seen so far but its not for the faint of heart.

 

rub

[billottawa 104]

Hey Mod, just wanted to pass along my thanks. Great utility, simple for quick clean-ups and has enough detail to do more complex stuff if you are so inclined. I've run it on all my systems(4) and there is a clear increase in performance.

[mod 135640]

I ran a few of the optimizer tools on a vista install and I had to resort to the backups as it changed something that would no longer allow me to keep "auto Arrange" turned off on my folder sort preferences. When I have more time I will try to narrow it down and find out what tool caused this.

 

Also I had to re-register 2 of my software programs as the registry cleaner on the vista install removed my registry key's. These however were programs that I had installed and "Upgraded" so I suspect the original key did not the current program version so it may have been seen as a obsolete key in the registry.