@59 (me): typo: exit should be edit.

@29: Revo Uninstaller offered to delete my entire HKLM branch.

#61,64,67,70, mike, as you noted, ERUNT really isn't safe on Vista/Win7 due to near-constant registry updates. System Restore is specifically designed to only restore certain things. There isn't anything even remotely like GoBack anymore, but there are some things which can be used when trying out software, like Windows SteadyState, Returnil, Acronis True Image Try&Decide, etc. (each has its good points and bad points). Something which offers a very small subset of GoBack functionality is Acronis Nonstop Backup (every five minutes) in Acronis True Image Home 2010.

I think this software does not received fair comments. I tried on it with XP, and I believe it does improved the start up performance time.

I have used Elcor's Advanced Registry Doctor and Premium Booster, thanks to GAOTD, and still use them until this time. Either app has not crippled my computer, rather it has ensured the integrity of the registry.

I use both alongside tune up utilities 2008, ccleaner, atf cleaner, and quicksys regcleaner 2009 and has so far not met anything I find unusual or alarming. I noted the comments of others on use of registry cleaners and have always kept them in mind.

After successfully installing and using it on XP SP3 I say this giveaway is a keeper! This registry cleaner looks very much like a product spun off the Advanced Registry Doctor Pro more than the Premium Booster and it has sped up my computer to a certain degree. My desk top is a six year old clone but it has more than 100 software apps, again, courtesy mostly of GAOTD. Download now while you still can!

I tried it on my system and it reduced the registry about 20%. But I didn't really notice any performance difference. I tend to keep the registry fairly clean as it is, even manually cleaning the registry sometimes. I suspect that for those who regularly maintain their systems it won't have any noticeable effect. Any noticeable performance improvement likely comes from cleaning the registry, not from defragmenting it.

I see 3 other programs that were given away here in "Other titles" section (Premium Booster, Advanced Registry Doctor Pro & TweakRAM).
I think TweakRAM is the only one more or less useful program from this company. All others were complete bloatware.
I will not risk damaging my registry with this program so I will pass today.

Too many people are confusing this with a Registry Cleaner. Registry cleaners deletes files (these can ruin your computer), Registry defrag rearranges your files to give you better performance.

73 --- It is free... you missed a step somewhere ... I did not install it but you have to read the "readme" file... Don't run from a zip file. Unzip first... then READ the instructions.. If you run Vista... run the setup and if there is an activate that too as Administartor. Sometimes Setup is first... other times activate is first. Sometimes there is no activate... sometimes you have to register to get a serial .. it comes in a minute or less for me. Thje point is READ>.. software here is free and licensed.

I use only Auslogics ... to defrag the drive... I don't do registry... I defrag about twice a year. You want to backup with something like Ghost. A true backup will only be reliable if done while your system is not booted... meaning you have to boot from a CD or DVD. That's gospel.

ohhh man this program is sooooooooooooooooooooooo boring , yawnzz. use caution well proceeding to download it. good night

Firstly I want to point out that this is a registry defragmenter, which makes it very different to a registry cleaner.

It does not search for and remove "invalid" registry entries from the registry, which on occasion can be disasterous if a registry cleaner mistakenly thinks a valid registry entry is an error and removes it.
Rather, this simply creates a new copy of the registry with any empty space removed.

Also note that "defragging" the registry like this can not be done by Windows itself of disk deframenters.

@60.

Do you have a 100mb hidden system partition ? That may be what is causing the problem.

I don't allow 7 to cretae that , and on my multiboot system - the program worked very well.

I agree - it would be useful to include a restore function for the backed up hives - a simple batch file that can be run from system recovery command prompt, and something via the GUI would be handy additions.

I have found Tuneup Utilities to do the same things as these software. In fact, all the features of these software are bundled into this software. I really like this software very much and would recommend it to everyone.

This program works on Vista 64 and 7 64 bit.

It offers 3 things;

1. Create a restore point. Under System backup>configuration, it also allows various adjustments to System restore - e.g. change the disk space allocated to shadow copy storage. (I only tried that function of the options on offer here)

2. Make a registry Backup. It makes backup copies of the registry hives. This is not a proprietary format and is the best way to back up the registry.

3. Compact the registry. I tested it on Vista SP2 x64 and 7 x64.

In addition it does not offer checkboxes next to the Hives that do not need compacting.

It worked perfectly.

**WARNING** **WARNING** **WARNING**
Just had to do a re-install of windows xp home sp2
cause of a totally corrupted registry. PC would not boot.
Be careful.

Registry cleaner is almost as useless – cleaning a few hundred lines of code in a registry is like sweeping one car parking space in a carpark the size of Montana – but more use than a registry defragger.


I agree. Only difficulty is 99.999% of people in the USA have no idea how big or small Montanna is, nor could they point to it on a map. Even the president of the USA needed help origianlly to find Iraq (at first pointed vaguely to Manchuria).

hi this seems to be a desent program it works reletivly quick and does speed up system but as with timir i would probably prefer a well know regictry cleaner


...you have done scientific research to back up your prolamation that it "does speed up the system." Ok then by how much 10%, 15%, 22.36189? Surely you must have this information available to back up your assertion. "Well it seems to be faster?" doesn't count, sorry.

I took advantage of offer #41 for speed up my pc 2009 from Uniblue and noticed quite noticeable new zest both online and off. Give it a go.

Start ;url at "download not // before it.

Vit Registry Fix is a modern looking program that has a lot of tools-registry cleaner, registry defrag, disk cleanup, startup manager and of course full registry backup as well. It "fixes" the registry for free. Its like NTregopt and ERUNT and a really good registry cleaner, disk cleaner, startup manager all in ONE small program. Its a gem. I don't need anything else or multiple tools anymore.

Freeware WinASO Registry Optimizer (includes registry defrag), 5 star in my opinion: http://www.winaso.com/

I will pass on this one. I am the only one who will edit the registry on my computer. I do not allow programs to edit it for me unless it tells me exactly what it is doing and I approve all of the keys, subkeys, and values that it is editing. (Just so I don't look stupid saying that I don't allow programs to edit the registry, the one exception to that is when installing programs, they are allowed to exit the registry.)

So, I think that this will be useful to the person who is relunctant to edit the registry, but as someone who edits the registry on a regular basis, I think I will pass.

I note the warnings to use a registry defragger/cleaner/scourer with great caution, however, I would be interested to find a registry management program that adds registry entries.

For my sins, after running multifarious reg clean programs, I find I have a Vista installation that has its Reliability Monitoring function made inoperative. While I thought I had had the 'cleaners' save their work, for later reversal, it hasn't turned out that way.

And, as well, I've lost a user - one of the machine's admins can no longer log in. :(

So, it seems to me that an intelligent solution would be to build a large database of what registry entries should be, and to add them when found missing. That'd make you a million or two.

Why? "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard..!" (JFK) :)

as others have said, this program is useless. windows slow ass defragger can do the job just fine. there is no real reason to download this bloatware.

What I don’t like is no Analyse option to report the current state of fragmentation of the registry hives to determine if a full “defragmentation” is even warrented. One has to choose Defragmentation or nothing. I am concerned over the term “also removes unused entries” A defragmenter should not touch the format of any entries in the registry, it should just defragment it and remove the fragmented space left by previously deleted or shortened entries and that is all. The description implies it is also a registry cleaner too and I certainly don’t want to trust a programatic registry cleaner when most will change settings that are there for a good reason as well as stuff left behind by lazy developers.

Snake oil
Nearly useless as are all other registry defraggers.
Show me one piece of research that indicates these thinggs have a useful effect - go on - google away - there is no such evidence!
Registry cleaner is almost as useless - cleaning a few hundred lines of code in a registry is like sweeping one car parking space in a carpark the size of Montana - but more use than a registry defragger.
More risk than its worth - and that is nothing.
Relax - your registry is fine - leave it alone!

Folks there are alot of these programs out there. Be very carefull with what you use. The effects may not show up right away!
Try your best registry defrag/cleaner, then use another one...You will still see that it has something to fix or adjust.
As for Glary Utils, I don't trust ones that do not respond to emails. Theyre there just to throw out their products and not support them. Glary for one, I have not got their util to fix broken short cuts, at least when i last tried.

There have been many of these offered here and other places free and for money, So far I can’t find any that are any better than what is already in your operating system.

I have found ;that most of these do more dammage than they ever have done any good. These programs will delete items that you need if you are not extreemely careful.

I tried so many of these and recomend none of them.

PANIC STATIONS..downloaded and setup no problem, even got so far as to register it. THIS PROGRAM MESSES UP VISTA64 It took another installation to fix. DO NOT use this with VISTA64

I found this program really useful. Installed quickly, and defragged without a problem. It reduced the size of the registry by 25%, and after reboot (which was actually quicker this time), every program loaded up a bit faster. So, thumbs up!

Registry cleaners... yeah.... I ONCE used a major brand...e-mailed them on a working system when MY system crashed. Their response?... "We can't help it if you don't know how to use it" Essentially, it was .. too bad, you tried it. Lou.

BOTTOM LINE: Terrible experience. Program is baulky, locked twice early in the defragmentation process. Unpacking the .zip was a multi-attempt effort....never had that experience before.

I've owned & use Registry Healer for many years. It's a far superior product, complete with automatic registry backup.

Registry Defragmentation gives the BEST boost to your PC's speed, in our experience! We believe that a Registry Repair/ Defragger/ Optimizer is an essential tool and that it is worth the money spent!

Of course, editing your Registry on your own is like performing an Appendicitis on yourself! And, using little-known Registry Editors is like getting it removed by a Quack :)

Read about the Windows Registry at http://www.welloiledpc.com/registry.htm.

Our favorite Windows Registry program is Elcor Software's PremiumBooster - it works with Windows 7 as well and gives us great results each time. For Windows XP, our choice Registry Defragger is Norton System Works - we have used NSW right from the DOS days and never once has it failed us!

The "problems" of the Registry, are those of any database... defunct entries, slack space left by deletions.

The old, OLD way to internally defrag the registry was to perform a full extraction and a full rebuild, and even that had some dodgy areas due to defect in the DOS mode regedit.

If you have frequent additions and removals, installing and removing trials, then your registry will be in a much "dirtier" state than if you have changed very little.

"Cleaning" is the process of removing junk entries, but is susceptible to mistakes in identifying the "junk".

"Compacting" (or registry defragmenting) is the closing up of waste space (a database compaction) - nothing is actually removed in this step, though there is a possible loss of synchronization because of changes made to the active registry during or after the compact.

Sysinternals Pagedefrag, and SOME commercial defragmenters in "offline" mode, can externally defragment the registry files so that all the disk clusters are contiguous - if you clean or defrag the registry by any other method, then it makes sense to follow up by defragmenting the final file.

Just a small point of note ERUNT and NTRegOPT are not SysInternal tools. They are written by Lars Hederer.

There's another reason why defragmenting the internal structure of the registry is not be very important or provide an expected large speed increase. When windows is running, much of the often-used information in the registry is loaded into RAM for ready access by Windows and programs. RAM memory access doesn't care how the data is arranged. Access time is the same whether the data is fragmented or not. Defragmenting the registry may slightly shorten the initial load time, but carries substantial risk if anything goes wrong.

I try to stay away from Software that includes any DOS Platform Operating System such as Windows 98SE and Windows 95 as I'm running Windows XP which is built on an all new Platform. However with all the negative responses on today's Giveaway I'll past on this offer as I'm already using Tune Up Utilities for it's Ratings. As always Thanks anyway.

Premium Booster (a previous giveawayoftheday from Elcore) performs this function and without a re-boot. CCCleaner has a registry cleaner but no defragger. Glary Utilities has a registry defragger that I trust and have used on occasion. IT analizes, tells you how much the registry will change, gives the yes/no option and if you opt to defrag, it does so and re-boots. Iobit's Advanced System Care has a registry defragger in the Utilities Tune-up section. Use any at your own risk!

HI all!!

To be honest I found this tool pretty decent but it's definetely not worth downloading!!

So THUMBS DOWN for me!!


To remove unused registry entries my favourite application is the FREEWARE "EASY CLEANER 2.0", a little great tool designed to remove irrelevant registry entries, fragmented files on the hard disk, duplicate files, unnecessary processes in the startup etc...

http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/EasyCleaner-Review-34741.shtml


As you can see from the above link it got an "EXCELLENT" rating from SOFTPEDIA EDITOR in all its key aspects such as User Interface, Features, Ease of use and Pricing/Value.

Enjoy!!



Cheers from Italy!!


Giovanni

Okay, I'm sorry I asked if it ran on Windows 7 (post #4), it's just that it claims it runs on Vista and the two OS's are quite similar, so I was hoping somebody would know for sure. I know I probably looked like a jack ass who didn't read the website. Next time I'll add a bit more information before asking questions.

As a computer tech I used to use 3rd party software until I met a computer genius who taught me the proper way to deal with pc's. I put him to the test with ccleaner and found that he got rid of more junk than the software did. These registry cleaners cannot know the many thousands of registry keys and values. Even Microsoft doesnt know them all so why use software to do it? All it does anyway is to get rid of empty values. If you want to defrag something do your hard drive.

I agree with Fubar, "Let sleeping dogs lie".
I was writing VB programs, back when MS used INI files.
Then MS introduced the Registry.
My programs still save all their settings in INI files.

I Agree with #31 and highly recommend Mark Russinovich PageDefrag.
"PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them. In addition, it defragments event log files and Windows 2000/XP hibernation files" (defragmentation is done at boot time).
It's free, available directly from Microsoft or e.g at Softpedia:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Pagedefrag.shtml

Rated Very Good (4.3/5) by 48 users, got 5/5 Softpedia pick and 5/5 Excellent Editor's award (link to review at the bottom of page)

I agree with Ashraf and Fubar, there is no need to mess with the Registry at all. (1) The space taken is minute (2) If you can measure the speed differential I would like to know what method is used.
I have seen more PCs winding up as expensive door stops after using so called Registry Cleaners and Registry Organisers.
Mostly they are cons which do nothing useful except match a registry entry with activity. The problem with that is that in many cases the so called "unused" registry entries are there as links to make the system work. Delete those and you have no working system.
Thanks for all your hard work GotD, it is, in the main, greatly appreciated. However giiving away any software that endangers the stability of a system seems to me a tad irresponsible.
I do understand that there are those who hold a different viewpoint on tampering with the registry so will say no more.

Please people, don't use these sorts of programs unless you plan on doing a reformat & reinstall your HD. These types of programs may sometimes work. But even when they do, they provide a trivial amount of benefit. However, they also can CRASH your system BIG TIME! Read Fubar (#9) & Ashraf (#1) again and stay Far away from these types of programs. The only cleaners I trust are CCleaner & Advanced System Care.

Reviewers and alternative advisors:
Please pay closer attention to the function of the product you are advising and giving alternatives for. Many are recommending disk defrag utilities and this product has nothing to do with disk defragmentation. It is a REGISTRY defrag utility.

To the rest that are advising and/or suggesting alternatives that are in the realm of this utility, thanks for sharing your "educated" (not just oppinionated) wisdom and info, you rock.

As for those that comment in a 120% positive fashion that sounds as if it's a BS plug for the product or company and have the tone of someone on too many amphetamines...hmmmm ;)

I have to say, I have used registry defrags in the past and lived to regret it. Both times I ended up with a crippled system regiring me to do a complete reinstall of my entire OS. Even then, I continued to have problems.

I tried reg clean and ccleaner and after my terrible experiences have vowed never to us it, I'd much rather error on the side of caution from my experience. If your system get that bad, reinstall the software, don't trust an 3rd party software to mess with the core of your opperating system. If only I knew before about taking snapshots of the registry I would have saved myself a whole lot of grief. So, years and thousands of dollars later, please don't do it.

Learn from someone that trusted such programs and lived to regret it. Don't mess with your regisitry, it isn't worth it I say this as only one who knows the dire outcome.

The only thing that goes near my Registry, (besides ME, with my 4"-thick Windows Developers' Manual, and the appropriate SDK & DDK Manuals sliding off of the table or my lap, so I don't do it often), is the "Sysinternals" ERUNT & NTREGOPT;

This set is still available, (and the entire "Sysinternals Suite" recently reported to have been "updated" by MS), free of charge from (first) Sysinternals/Mark Russinovich, then later "picked up" by Microsoft themselves;

Since Mark works/worked for them, while he was doing the "Sysinternals" stuff "on the side", hence it's free but there wasn't any "Official Support" from MS while Mark was doing it;
I don't know if MS has decided to "officially support it", or if they "support it" but don't provide any "official Help" for it.

If you don't already have the entire suite of the Sysinternals stuff, get it by either Googling it, or just look on the major Freeware-Shareware-Trialware sites, like MajorGeeks.com, cNet.com, SoftPedia, etc., and look for the latest release-versions, now from Microsoft themselves;
(Older versions, {from Mark Russinovich}, are OK too, especially if you're running earlier versions of W9x, 2000, or XP; If running Vista or later, or any Win-Server after 2003, stick to a release that's at least the same date or later than your OS, since using an Internals app that's older than the version of the OS it's being used on is "bad medicine").

GAOTD-Team, we really DO appreciate the efforts you go through to get us these "freebies", but for me, this one's something that I'll have to "take a pass on", from bitter past experience.

Thanks anyway, & "Keep On Truckin!"... :o)

J.

.... and a happy day to you Happy Person #27 ..... however your two links for Ultra Defrag and My Defrag (I have used nothing other than My Defrag (formerly JK Defrag) for years)are for Disk Defragmenters and not Registry Defragmenters and are therefore not comparable options.

I have been using Advanced System Care for a while now. Started here at GOAD and progressed to where I bought the PRO version. The free version comes with a registry cleaner and a registry defrag built in.
Many other options for this program are free. The first time I ran the cleaner it found 700 some problems. The PRO version does a deep scan and found 4500 problems. The program also creates a backup of anything it does.

The registry defrag also works great.

I have had no problems from the registry programs at all. Running XP SP3. Nor any other part of the system.

I don't usually promote any software, especially tools, but this one deserves a long hard look.

The Registry is a dark and densely packed shedful of gelignite.

You may wish to walk into it holding a lighted candle in order to see what's on the shelves and how best to tidy 'em.

Whether or not you walk away unscathed is another matter, because the hot wax dripped by your candle may very well trigger a slow burn rather than an instant explosion.

So although the shed is still intact after your visit, and all your poking around / tidying of its contents, that's actually no guarantee at all: it could blow up in your face some time afterwards.

Though today's ultra-hyped software offering assaults the intelligence with claims of 'gigantic improvements' -- gigantic? What's that then, a factor of 10? 100? 1,000? -- it's ultimately no different to any other app ever marketed: the user must trust in the skill of the creator and hope that there aren't hidden flaws in the build.

Doing that with the non-critical may, just, be OK. But trusting to luck with something as critical as the computer's registry is faith at its most blind.

Reassurance does of course exist where an app has been around a long time -- for example, the freeware optimiser NTREGOPT, as notable for the way it shuns commercial hype as the way it has evolved and been refined thanks to feedback from users worldwide.

Similar reassurance also exists in the form of Revo Uninstaller, which does a great job in cleaning up Registry detritus after every uninstall anyway.

Today's software also seeks to provide that same reassurance too -- yet I don't know what happened to all the preceding versions, even though by implication there must've been a heck of a lot for this ever to have reached the status of build number v9.1.

Nor is it clear why, after all those successive builds, this software continues to be entirely incapable of reporting on the 'state' of the Registry before it even gets to work on it.

Doesn't it know? Can't it tell?

It certainly should, because only a fool consents to surgery without advance diagnosis.

Thanks, then, GOTD, but where today's software is concerned, a definite no thanks.

Whatever version it truly happens to be.