free windows registry cleaner?

KathysBoy

charmedangela wrote: »

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

Unless you've changed it previously then system managed is the default setting anyway. You can set it manually in which case the recomended norm is 1.5 x your RAM, and effectively what this does is fix the size of your virtual memory, whereas system managed modifies it as required. Views are mixed on whether you set it manually and whether there is any benefit, but I would only recomend playing with this setting if you are reasonably computer savvy.

5bellies_2

There's some good advice on this thread, but some pretty bad advice also.

The virtual memory isn't dependent on any percentage free of the hard drive, just that it needs to be capable of being a certain size. Nor does it need to be bigger as the amount of actual memory increases, it just needs to be fairly big in the first place. Running no virtual memory is possible, just daft.

Always set it to allow the system to make it as large as needed, and always have at least 4Gb of hard drive space free.Defragging your hard drive is a good idea, it'll speed up disk access, which is likely to be the slowest part of your newly expanded system.

Registry cleaners are, generally, a total waste of time and effort against adding more memory. If you still find your system slow after adding the memory, think about a new system. If you can't afford that, try a format and reinstall. That works wonders in most cases.

G_M

Two. Both free:

cc cleaner

Eusing

KathysBoy

5bellies wrote: »

There's some good advice on this thread, but some pretty bad advice also.

The virtual memory isn't dependent on any percentage free of the hard drive, just that it needs to be capable of being a certain size. Nor does it need to be bigger as the amount of actual memory increases, it just needs to be fairly big in the first place. Running no virtual memory is possible, just daft.

Always set it to allow the system to make it as large as needed, and always have at least 4Gb of hard drive space free.Defragging your hard drive is a good idea, it'll speed up disk access, which is likely to be the slowest part of your newly expanded system.

Registry cleaners are, generally, a total waste of time and effort against adding more memory. If you still find your system slow after adding the memory, think about a new system. If you can't afford that, try a format and reinstall. That works wonders in most cases.

I don't think I was saying it needed to be a certain size, I was trying to explain that the fuller your disk the harder the pc has to work on disk access. I agree defragging will speed up access, but again, the fuller the disk the longer this takes, particularly if you've never done it before, and you use the included Windows version.

It will always be better if you put more RAM in, but I still think you need to do some disk management.

Charmedangela

KathysBoy wrote: »

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.

yes it's a typo! should have been 111gb free!
do regullry do a disk defrag & disk clean up

have photos also backed up online incase anything happens to external hard drive ( sorry cant remember poster's name!)

aliEnRIK

Most registry cleaners do more harm than good. CCLEANER is the safest I know
If the machine is still playing up and its free from malware etc then GLARY UTILITIES is the next best bet

busenbust

I absolutely concur about ccleaner; it's a great, and free, utility but one should always tread carefully with regards to 'cleaning' the registry. You might end up with anything but ::exclamati.

timestar

There was an article a couple of weeks ago in the techie magazine PC Advisor about computing myths. In that it mentioned that for most people on "modern" PCs cleaning the registry or defragging will make almost no difference to performance, and may do more harm than good.