The registry has – in my opinion – always been the Achilles Heel for Windows. When first conceived it was only meant to be used by Windows and other Microsoft specific software. It was never meant to be the gluttonous pig that it has devolved into, but once developers discovered ways to store their own application’s setting in it there was nowhere to go but down.

While the jury is still out regarding Windows 7 there has always been this standing joke about having to do a fresh install of Windows every six months or so because how unresponsive it could be. This isn’t a problem cause completely by the operating system itself but rather by all the crud that ends up in there from other applications.

It is also a problem that is exasperated by lazy developers who don’t include simple registry clean up routines in their uninstalls for their applications. So this means that after time, especially if you like checking out a lot of programs, the registry can grow to almost unmanageable size.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the years, mostly among power users and tweakers, as to the benefits – if any – of using registry cleaners. Myself I tend to fall on the side that as long as you know what you are doing by using these utilities it can’t hurt. However that is a problem in itself as not all reg-cleaners are easy to use or to understand the damage that can be done when using them.

I know that even with all my years of using computers mistakes can be made and painful ones at that. Like the time back when I was still developing software I ran a reg-cleaner and not heeding my own advise I blindly accepted all the supposed dead items that had been found and hit the Fix It button. When it completed it jobs I figured everything was nice and safe only to have Visual Studio throw all kinds of errors when I tried to start it up.

It turns out that among the registry items I had selected to fix was a whole slew of reg-keys that dealt with Visual Studio. I ended up having to re-install the program before being able to get back to work on a project.

Experiences like that one however hasn’t stopped me from checking out new utilities that work with the registry. So with that little bit of history and caveat I have a couple new registry related utilities to offer up for you to check out but with one really BIG warning – if a program that deals with the registry lets you create a System Restore point let it. As well even if it has this option you should always backup your registry before screwing around with it.

So first up here is a new reg-cleaner that I have come across – and used – that appears to to a really good job as it found dead settings that another reg-cleaner I was trying out the other days seems to have missed. The utility is called Free Windows Registry Repair 2.0 from Regsofts.com

It’s a pretty basic UI – nothing flashy or over done in the eye-candy department which really it doesn’t need to be. As you can see by the option buttons the available commands include the usual type of thing of which Restore – create a new System Restore point. Now you can use this option at anytime but the program will also create one automatically before starting any repairs.

Once you have run either the Full Scan or the Custom Scan you will end up with a pretty comprehensive list of dead reg-keys as you can see here

As always when dealing with utility programs like this that let you play around in really sensitive parts of the operating system I can’t stress hard enough – be careful. Once you have gone through the list and unchecked any items that you know are wrong or even not sure of you can click the Fix Errors button. In short order the program will remove any of the remaining checked items in the list from your registry.

Now this next utility can draw even more heated discussions among Windows users and that is the idea of optimizing your registry once you have fixed any errors, or you can even set up running it as a task to be run on a regular basis.

The utility I am referring to are those that you can use to optimize your registry. It is one thing to clean out all the garbage that might collect there over time but that really doesn’t remove the space those settings may have occupied in the registry. This is the idea behind the class of registry utilities called registry optimizers.

The one that I tested as a follow-up to the registry cleaner is called NTREGOPT by Lars Hederer and like the registry cleaner is pretty plain and straight forward. Once you have installed and run the utility you will be presented with a information dialog letting you know how much space has been saved as well as an option to reboot your computer so the changes can take effect.

I just want to end off this post by saying once again – before messing around with your register make sure that you create a System Restore point and backup your registry.