Registry Cleaner Reviews - Choosing The Best Solution

Over the past twelve years working as a software developer, I have always found it surprising how few people take the time to ensure their computer keeps running smoothly. Clutter from unnecessary files, invalid directories, and other damaging data can cause serious damage to the computer registry and cause problems like: computer crashes, strange errors, and extreme slowdowns in performance. Most users purchase and install anti-virus software but they don't bother with a simple registry cleaner that keeps their machine healthy and ready-to-use. With so many registry cleaners on the market today let's take a moment to talk what it is they can and can't do for you.

First, a registry cleaner is NOT solution for virus protection or for AdWare/SpyWare scanning. These types of issues are different than registry and corrupted data problems. You should have these tools as well, but separate from your registry scanning software.

Second, NOT everyone will need a registry scanner. If you only turn your PC on once a month to play a game of solitaire, then you needn't worry, your computer will be fine. If you are like most of us though, and you use your PC more than once a week, it's a whole different story.

Third, a registry cleaner IS a comprehensive system scanner that will work to clean your windows registry and correct file corruption problems on your computer. Your registry cleaner works to correct issues and can even help increase the speed of your PC. Some uses have reported speed increases in the range of 60-70% and that isn't even accounting for the countless hours of frustration saved by ridding the PC of major errors. These advantages continue if you run the registry cleaner once a month.

Fourth, if you choose the wrong registry cleaning solution you can do your PC more harm than good! System registries are a complex topic and the software needs to designed by a team of professional developers who are experts in the field. It can hardly be called an automated solution if if it causes more harm than good!

Along with the other developers on my team, we have evaluated the top four registry cleaners in the industry based on the following criteria:

Registry Repair - How well the registry cleaner corrected our issues. In this case we didn't just evaluate the software for how well it cleaned the system registry. We evaluated it for how well it corrected all of the following issues:

Correct Windows Errors

Stop Blue Screens

Stop Computer freezes

Increase Startup/Shutdown speed

Fix Installer Errors

Avoid Reboot Screens

Correct Program Crashes

Fix the Extreme Sluggishness

Fix Driver Errors

Delete Invalid Shortcuts

Correct DLL/MSI Errors

Fix Corrupt Registry Entries

Easy of Use - Software shouldn't require a degree to use it. A good registry cleaner should be simple enough that even the least technical user can use it.

Customer Support - Good software companies should provide support to their customers, and should respond quickly to support enquiries. They should also properly document their software to make it simple to find the information yourself.

Worked to Clean a Window PC -We used a corrupted desktop PC running Windows 7 (64-bit) Home edition for this test.

Worked to Clean a Laptop - The laptop we used in the tests was an extremely error-prone computer that ran Windows XP Professional.

Worked to Clean a Mac running Windows - Mac users also run Windows and to ensure that it would work we also tested on a Mac running Windows XP.

Overall Rating - Our rating overall when taking all of the above factors into account.

To ensure all of our tests were performed under the same conditions, after each test we restored the computer's their original problematic condition , and then moved on to the next tool.

Below I have shared the result of our testing for the top four registry cleaners. The clear winner from our testing was RegCure. But the other four products on the list were also solid solutions.

With any of these solutions you don't need to be a software developer to keep your computer running like it did when you bought it. The solutions offered below are simple, but I will give you my email address (info@reviewsaboutcentral.com) in case you have any questions.

Once you get your Registry Cleaner running, please do let me know (email above) how well it worked for you. Also let me be the first to congratulate you and cleaning your registry without taking the time to earn a computer degree.

To keeping your computer error free,

Ethan Thomas (and team)

THE TOP PICK FOR REGISTRY CLEANING SOFTWARE

RegCure

RegCure Screen

Rating9.9/10

Registry Repair

Ease of Use

Customer Support

Overall Rating

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#1 Rated Registry Cleaner in 2011

Without a doubt RegCure won out the Registry Cleaner tests. In fact, the only reason I didn't give it a 10 out of 10 rating is because I believe there is no such thing as a perfect product, and that there is always room for improvement.

This solution does it all for you automatically, and is still powerful enough to be adjusted to suit the needs of even the most technical users.

Once you have RegCure on your PC it quickly becomes apparent how simple it is to use. With basic settings all it takes is a click of a button and the software will automatically scan your PC and get it running almost as fast as it did when you bought it.

That simplicity doesn't come at the sacrifice of power though. For more advanced users there are options that allow you to control almost every aspect of the software. You can customize your scans to clean everything, or just the portions of the registry that you want.

For the purpose of our tests, we used RegCure with its basic settings (the automatic scan). This one had the fastest scan time out of all of tools we tested, and corrected more errors than the other registry cleaners.

After running the automatic scan, our computers ran almost as though they were brand new. All of the registry issues that were there before stopped, startup and shutdown speeds were cut in half, and after using the PC's for a couple of hours it was determined that all of the crash problems were corrected.

RegCure also worked well for detecting errors outside of the Windows Registry. It did correct all of the registry problems, and it also corrected issues with corrupted files, invalid directories, and DLL files. It also created an automatic backup just in case anything went wrong with the scan.

Once we determined that the software itself was excellent we also contacted RegCure to get support. Their support pages are filled with useful information that help users through problems, and a simple link to ask a question was all it took for us to contact support. We received an answer to our question within an hour of sending it.

For excellent software, ease-of-use, great support, and a powerful package to boot we are giving RegCure our top rating.

Another big plus for this one is that it comes with a money-back guarantee!

December Update: Currently RegCure is being offered for a limited-time price of only $29.95. I've been told that the price will shoot back up to $40 soon!

In Summary: Excellent automatic scanning, flexibility for power-users, and top-notch customer support make this one our top choice. As an added bonus it comes complete with a money-back guarantee.

Click Here to Get Your Registry Cleaned

RegSweep Registry Cleaner Screen

Rating9.0/10

Registry Repair

Easy of Use

Customer Support

Overall Rating

Highly Recommended

2. Registry Gear

The next registry cleaner on our list is Registry Gear. This one came in second place mostly because of their customer support, and partially because it lacks some of the flexibility of RegCure.

When we tested Registry Gear, two things it does have going for it are ease of use and great registry cleaning ability.

A full system scan can be performed with a click of a button, and the time it took to scan was close to matching that of our first place product. In other words, this one is a solid solution and the software itself is a great tool.

Our PC issues were completely corrected with a single scan, and the overall performance as a scanning tool likely matches that of RegCure.

The two issues that we had with this one were with it's flexibility and customer support.

Registry Gear lacks the customizability of RegCure. The software is geared towards being simple, and can't be adjusted to as a large degree as our winner can.

When we contacted customer support with an issue, it took close to 8 hours to get an answer. Of course this isn't bad when compared to many software companies but when compared to our 1 hour answer from RegCure it was a mark against this one. To their credit, Registry Cleaner does have good documentation that will help most users through common issues.

All in all I found this one to be an excellent product and I am adding it to the list of highly recommended products.

Click Here to Get Registry Gear

Error Doctor - Our Third Place Registry Cleanrt

Rating8.5/10

Registry Repair

Easy of Use

Customer Support

Overall Rating

Highly Recommended

3. Reg Fixer Pro

Taking third place in the registry cleaner tests is a program called Reg Fixer Pro. Again this one performed fairly well. There were a couple of areas where there were some issues though.

As far as performance is concerned, Reg Fixer Pro did correct registry issues in a single scan with automatic settings. There were a few less errors found than with our top two products, but all of our performance issues were corrected with only one scan. Where this one is lacking though is with scan speed (it was slower than the top two on our list), and it's also lacking in manual scan options.

The only type of setting you have with Reg Fixer Pro is a manual scan which performs the same scan as the automatic setting, but which requires you to manually click and correct the errors. This type of solution is time consuming and makes customizability near impossible.

The other area where we had some issue was with support. Most of the registry cleaners on our list had online documentation and different ways to contact support. With Reg Fixer Pro you have one contact form.

They did respond quickly when we asked a question, but many users could have corrected their problems with a simple FAQ section on their site and avoided waiting 2 hours for a response.

All in all I would recommend Reg Fixer Pro if the first two products weren't suitable. Customizability isn't an issue for most users, and the software itself performed well enough.

Click Here to Get Reg Fixer Pro

Registry Fix Registry Cleaner\

Rating6.5/10

Registry Repair

Easy of Use

Customer Support

Overall Rating

Solid Product

4. Registry Fix

The last registry cleaner on the list is Registry Fix. Again I am giving this one a solid product rating, but for most users RegCure is likely a better choice.

When we tested Registry Fix it did perform well, but it required some adjustment first. The automatic scan option didn't find nearly as many errors as any of the other products on our list, and to get those errors we had to perform manual scans with different settings. In other words, it took more than one scan to fix our registry. It also didn't find the problems outside of the registry like the other products did (directory errors, DLL problems, etc).

Once we performed the second scan the laptop ran smoothly, but in my opinion users will be happier with the other products on our list.

Another problem with this one was that it was difficult to get running on our Windows Vista 64-bit desktop computer. We did eventually get it to work, but it took steps that the average computer user wouldn't be able to accomplish.

It should also be noted that Registry Fix had the slowest scan times, with a basic scan taking almost 10 minutes.

Finally Registry Fix only has an email address for support. They did answer our question, but not until the next day. There is no online documentation at all.

Since we were able to clean our computers and get them performing like they should we are giving this one a solid product rating. Most users will be happier with one of the other solutions on our list though, and 64-bit Vista users should avoid this one altogether.