Q: What is the Best Registry Cleaner?

A:  I am not convinced that you need a Registry Cleaner in the first place, but if you do feel like you need one, I recommend the free one built into CCleaner.

I absolutely do NOT recommend you pay for one of the many products that bombard us with ads on every download site out there.  I have never seen a case where a "Registry Cleaner" software fixed a problem or sped up a computer. 

The registry has tens of thousands of entries in it, and most products I've seen identify a few hundred "problems".  These mostly consist of leftover entries from uninstalled software, but...if the software no longer exists, how much a problem can a few extra records in the registry be?

Other times I have seen products where you "fix" all the problems it finds, then run another scan and it finds another batch of problems.  WHAT?

I think Registry Cleaners are for the most part just a scare tactic.  If your registry is corrupt, you'll know it, because you'll be having problems getting your computer to boot at all. 

Update: I just ran across the following quote from Mark Russinovich, co-founder of Winternals and SysInternals, two companies which were purchased by Microsoft.  He is one of the smartest guys out there when it comes to Windows, and he says: "I haven't and never will implement a Registry cleaner since it's of little practical use on anything other than Win2K terminal servers and developing one that's both safe and effective requires a huge amount of application-specific knowledge."

Case closed.

<----- Back to Software FAQ