Windows Vista Blog

I have been asked this question at least a hundred times over the past several years.  Running a computer repair business you learn to expect questions like this and even encourage them.

The short answer to this is yes they do work and I use a registry cleaning tool in every computer tune-up and run a scan on nearly every computer that has been infected with a virus or if the customer is having blue screens or other off the wall issues.

In just this last week I have used a registry cleaning product at least a dozen times.  The first issue was because Mcafee was not installing onto a system.  It kept thinking that an older program called Webroot was still on the system.  After looking around and verifying that the client did un-install the program correctly I could see the registry keys needed to be cleaned out and the invalid traces removed.  After running the scan I had no issues installing the product.

I also used the tool on several other computer to eliminate long boot times and the computer not shutting down in a timely fashion.  Now the real question is what is the best registry cleaner.  If you were to ask a hundred techs you will get a few dozen answers.  While there are many leading products the right one for you does depend on your computer skills and needs.

For instance if you do not have a lot of tech skills and you do not fully trust your deleting skills then I would encourage the user to get Regcure.  It’s one of the safe registry cleaners out there and the program makes it very hard to mess things up. It also has a start-up manager tool that makes it very simple to stop programs from auto starting on your computer.  For people with limited computer skills or those who just want to hit a few buttons and be done then it’s a great option.  One down side of this product is it does not work with 64 bit operating systems and does not have a self junk file cleaner.  Yes you could always just use the built in one from Windows but I think they should have their own program.

If you are a little more tech savvy and have the time to spend on learning a new program I would go with Registry Mechanic.  The makers of this program is PCTools.  They have been around a very long time and this tool has many different options.  They also have a program called Desktop Manefesto that is a genuine PC optimization tool.  It also works on 64 bit operating systems.