free windows registry cleaner?

Charmedangela

is there a free registry cleaner out there for windows? lots of sites with free scans saying that thousands of files are faulty and can easily be fixed by spending £xx.00 !!!

do i really need to spend money to get this or is there a good hidden site that does the job for free.

have had a look abou the web, but have no idea really on what to be looking for to get the best performance from my PC.

any help is greatfully received!

rmg1

Cleaning the registry doesn't normally need to be done unless you're looking at a specific problem on your machine.
Is there one?
What OS are you using?

closed

A registry cleaner won't increase performance.

rmg1

What's the spec of your machine (RAM, Hard-drive, etc)?

turbobob

If you need a system clean up utility, this is pretty good for free - http://www.ccleaner.com/

There are lots of scams out there, including fake anti virus, anti spyware and registry cleaner programs. They trick you into thinking your computer has various problems to get you to buy the product, which is actually malware. You might want to download Malwarebytes (free version), update it, and then run a full scan.

ormus

from my fuzzled memory there are 2 free progs i remember, regcleaner and cc cleaner.

Charmedangela

got the ccleaner and malwarebytes the other day. have run both of those. wasnt sure if buying anything would improve performance.
have just upgraded memory from 2x 512mb to 2x1gb, that seems to have made things better.
have 144gb hard drive, with 11gb free now after getting rid of loads of stuff that dont use and transfering photos onto seperate hard drive.
got windows xp media centre, dell dimention 3100. was getting lots of page freezes and the pop up that virtual memory was low.

just didnt want to waste money on something that i didnt think was required, but i'm not that techie to know for sure!

ormus

The pop up is telling you to increase the size of the virtual memory because you have increased the ram.

Right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Advanced tab. Click the Settings button in the Performance panel. Click the Advanced tab in the Performance dialog. Click the Change button in the Virtual memory panel.
Whew! This setting is buried quite thoroughly!
Look for the System managed size option, select it if it isn't already selected, and then click OK, OK, OK. That should end the warnings.

Charmedangela

wow, thank you so much!!!!!!!!!! i have looked all over for help with that and never got anywhere!! i can do my laptop now too

closed

With 2GB of ram on XP, you could get away with no virtual memory.

Transferring photo's won't speed things up, and is a bad idea if that is your only copy, what if the external drive fails?

KathysBoy

charmedangela wrote: »

got the ccleaner and malwarebytes the other day. have run both of those. wasnt sure if buying anything would improve performance.
have just upgraded memory from 2x 512mb to 2x1gb, that seems to have made things better.
have 144gb hard drive, with 11gb free now after getting rid of loads of stuff that dont use and transfering photos onto seperate hard drive.
got windows xp media centre, dell dimention 3100. was getting lots of page freezes and the pop up that virtual memory was low.

just didnt want to waste money on something that i didnt think was required, but i'm not that techie to know for sure!

Unless you've made a typo I would suggest that your main problem is space on the hard disk. 11gb free out of 144gb is not enough for windows to operate effectively. I never let mine fall below 40% free, yours is 8%.The virtual memory uses the hard disk to store data, but because of the small amount it's having to search quite hard to find some space, this is whats probably causing the problem. Firstly I would I would see whats taking up the space. 134gb is a lot of space to be used unless you've got lots of videos etc. I would also check how much space is being used by system restore. There's lots of things you can do to clear space. Secondly I would defrag the hard drive, to see how much space thats frees up