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Good registry cleaner

I'm looking to do a spring clean of my PC at home, have done all the good stuff, defragging, clearing space, uninstalling disused programs and so on. The machine (p4 2GHz) still has the performance of a machine running at about 1.4GHz. It does need a RAM upgrade, but is running so much slower than it was 6 months ago.
Basically, I'm looking for a registry cleaner because I've installed and uninstalled alot of shareware, freeware and developer software and am trying to find a good registry cleaner. Don't mind paying as I'll use it plenty, free would be better of course. Any one used one that they can recommend? I've tried using google and review sites but they are just cluttered with malware and sub standard programs.
Many thanks in advance.
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Comments

  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 4,466 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Try CCleaner, not that simply cleaning the registry will make any noticeable difference to performance..
  • Doooford
    Doooford Posts: 471 Forumite
    Thanks anewhope, obviously you are a Vista, OSX or Linux user. Unfortunately I am one of the slaves to XP, it's my partners PC and she wants XP on it and that's the end of it.
    Just in case you ever come across an XP machine with stability and speed issues I can absolutely guarantee you that a clean of the registry will help the system a great deal!
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 4,466 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Doooford wrote: »
    Thanks anewhope, obviously you are a Vista, OSX or Linux user. Unfortunately I am one of the slaves to XP, it's my partners PC and she wants XP on it and that's the end of it.
    Just in case you ever come across an XP machine with stability and speed issues I can absolutely guarantee you that a clean of the registry will help the system a great deal!

    And XPe ;)

    In terms of the speed issues, you'll get a much more significant gain in responsiveness by looking at what programs you have installed and what are running in the system tray etc. Printer software, resource heavy antivirus, messenger systems, firewalls, spyware programs, modem software etc can all seriously degrade the system.

    Why not back it all up, reformat and start with some lighter programs and the latest drivers? RAM's cheapish at the moment, probably won't stay that way for long, so you could buy now to save later.
  • spakkker
    spakkker Posts: 1,322 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I use xp and I second anewhope entirely. I use regseeker and have never had any issues for a few years now- majorgeeks is a good d/l site with ratings and no. of d/l's. Ccleaner's best use, after simply cleaning, is the startup option in tools.
    Maybe more relevant is what is your mo/board? This will let you/us find out if a cpu upgrade is possible/worthwhile and what type/how much memory you can have. In my opinion memory ,though cheap-ddr2-, isn't a miracle worker and cpu upgrade is more important ,though maybe not economically viable.
  • Reggie_Rebel
    Reggie_Rebel Posts: 5,036 Forumite
    I've used eusing and ccleaner. Both make a noticeable difference the first time they are run
    It's taken me years of experience to get this cynical
  • Doooford
    Doooford Posts: 471 Forumite
    I have cleaned the system as much as possible, unistalled everything I can, using lite versions of what I can and am aware of all services and programs running. Don't really want to shell out on any components, but just want a little bit of responsiveness, this PC is only used for internet and itunes so it's not as though I'm really stressing out the current setup.
    Many thanks for the advice all!
  • chunter
    chunter Posts: 2,008 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Simplest way to get it to go quicker is to reformat and reinstall.
    Backup your documents and wipe her!
  • Marty_J
    Marty_J Posts: 6,594 Forumite
    Doooford wrote: »
    Thanks anewhope, obviously you are a Vista, OSX or Linux user. Unfortunately I am one of the slaves to XP, it's my partners PC and she wants XP on it and that's the end of it.

    Install Ubuntu on it and don't tell her. End of registry problems.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 4,466 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    You could try PageDeFrag to see if that does anything to improve system responsiveness, but I wouldn't count on anything significant coming from it.

    The problem with registry cleaners and the claims they make is the structure of the registry itself. It's a database with many hundreds of thousands of entries, and when programs clear a couple of hundred 'errors' they find out, it does next to nothing for performance as the system can parse these entries in miliseconds. Registry problems were a more of an issue with Windows 9x, but the NT based operating systems aren't plagued by them.

    The time that you could take defragmenting the drive and pagefiles, working through registry cleaners et all might as well be spent backing up and reinstalling, it's the only way you are going to get real noticeable improvements.
  • thomas01155
    thomas01155 Posts: 2,382 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Comodo System Cleaner is good http://forums.comodo.com/comodo_system_cleaner_fileregistryprivacy_cleaner/comodo_system_cleaner_116493931_released-t35215.0.html it has its new safe delete technology http://www.comodo.com/news/press_releases/19_02_09.html "Comodo System-Cleaner is the world's first file and registry cleaner to harness the power of 100% safe cleaning."
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