We Rate The Most Popular Programs
Is your PC Slow? Have you thought about hiring an 'expert' to clean it up? While an expert technician can most likely get your PC back up to operating speed again, how about the next time you have a problem? It can cost $100 bucks to have an expert diagnose and fix PC errors. Because of this high cost, many users today turn to registry cleaning software. But there are so many choices, how will you know which program is best? Our crack team of editors and reviewers spent 5 weeks reviewing all these programs to find the right answer.
To review each program, our editors first identified 12 different companies that were providing registry cleaning software of some kind. They then used each of these programs to clean one of our' test mule' PC's (Dell AMD Athlon x2 3800+, 2.00Ghz, 2Gb Ram) that had been identically set up and compromised by one of our network engineers. We ran the programs, following the developer's directions to the letter.
We then ran speed tests on each machine - the top 5 machines ranked by speed were identified, and the registry cleaner software we used on that machine-made our 'top-5' cut.
Our editors found that most of the programs did not work or even made the PC run slower, to our complete surprise! Most of the programs out there don't deliver the goods.
Fortunately, we could find in our top 5 winners software we can recommend to our readers. All of them were very successful in cleaning our test PCs. Some were a bit better than others, here is what we found:
- Registry Easy
No surprise here- Registry Easy was our top pick. Scanning our test computers didn't take very long, and when it finished, the results were nicely laid out and great in number (above 700 on the first scan), many crucial registry defects were detected that other scanners failed to pick up. Clean up is a breeze and the results shined when we rebooted the computer, making a noticeable difference in the boot-up time and overall operating speed.
Custom scans can be initialized for advanced users who want certain areas of the Registry to be scanned, and any false positives that it may find can easily be ignored from future scans easily by using the "Ignore List." Another great highlight is the ability to backup all of the detected registry entries before changes or deletions are made in case any registry fixes bring about problems. This makes RegCure absolutely risk-free and sure to fix a wide range of windows problems.
- Cleaned Everything Including Hard To Diagnose Bots
- Easy To Navigate - User Friendly
- Good Value
- Strong Guarantee
- Registry Fix
Just behind Registry Easy, Registry Fix did a good job of diagnosing and cleaning our test PC. Unlike other registry scanners, Registry Fix sports a very minimalist look. No flashy buttons and high-end graphics are found, making Registry Fix better for slower systems.
Registry Fix takes up less memory and is more stable to use overall. There are only 3 options on the right for scanning the system and tweaking the other options with the scanning options shown on the right. This doesn't look too aesthetically pleasing, but the interface isn't too much of a drag either.
Registry Fix is a solid registry cleaning solution that has all the necessary capabilities in performing a full scan. It can scan for missing file associations, DLL files, system fonts, and even invalid device drivers. However, scanning with Registry Fix takes around twice as long as the popular registry cleaning tools.
The results of the scan report twice as many errors as well, leading to believe that Registry Fix takes more time in scanning for bad entries. This doesn't necessarily make Registry Fix any better because a lot of the bad entries may be important files that can possibly harm the system even more rather than heal it.
- Complete Scanning
- A Little Slower Than Most
- Easy To Navigate - User Friendly
- Good Value
- Strong Guarantee
- ErrorFix
While not as complete in cleaning dangerous web bots as our previous two choices, nonetheless, ErrorFix did an admirable job. The user interface of the latest version of ErrorFix is a bit overwhelming with graphics and non-traditional window design.
This may or may not be embraced by users, but it is a bit intuitive once you get used to the big buttons. The "Scan" and "Remove" buttons are impossible to miss. However, the extra graphics used in Error Doctor can hog more resources than lighter registry cleaners.
Performance-wise, ErrorFix does an exceptional job in taking registry errors head-on without tackling the critical entries. It covers the majority of different categories that registry problems come in, and different categories can be treated according to the user's needs. It fails in detecting the most errors falling short in terms of performance when being compared to a popular program like Registry Easy.
- Solid Cleaner
- Quirky User Interface
- Good Value
- Strong Guarantee
- RegTool
We had a bit of trouble getting the hang of RegTool. It has the typical look and feel of most scanner tools having the menu items on the left and the main window on the right.
The interface looks professionally done without all the unnecessary colorful elements, but the fonts could use a change. However, the use of icons for each registry category blends pretty well. New users should feel pretty welcome and should not have any trouble in executing basic tasks within RegTool.
Full registry scans take a bit longer than other programs when RegTool is used. But the time is well worth it as RegTool manages to detect real registry defects and leaves the clean ones alone.
The only downside of this method of scanning is that newer and more elusive entries may not end up as threats. Regional still knows how to go through all the categories by scanning start-up entries, DLL references, driver problems, missing fonts, and other areas.
- Versatile, Good Program
- Missed Some Problems
- Good Value
- Strong Guarantee
RegDefense
From ActiveX problems to File Associations, RegDefense does a fair job in detecting and removing a variety of registry problems. Anyone wanting to have a full scan should be able to conduct it without any problems as that is the only option available. In terms of speed and accuracy, RegDefense scores somewhere on the lower end of our test- it isn't very great, but not so bad either.
Along with the basic scanning options, RegDefense doesn't have many extras to offer either. There is one option available that can disable the automatic checking of items to turn the full scan into a manual scan so advanced users can select which detected registry items are to be changed.
- Fair Results
- A Little Slow
- Not The Best Choice