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Latest news

11 Jan 2007: Registry System Wizard version 1.7.3 has been released to cater for running under Windows Vista

30 May 2006: Version 3.11 of AMust Registry Cleaner released

Links:

• Registry System Wizard
• RegAlyzer
• AMust Registry Cleaner

Registry Utilities

This should not be taken as a recommendation, but sometimes it becomes necessary to make changes to the Registry. The RegEdit tool in Windows XP is not the most intuitive piece of software to use and in fact the recommendation is not to edit the registry unless you are really sure of what you are doing. In addition for safety reasons it is recommended that you backup the registry before making any changes.

Although there are now some reasonable tools to help with tidying the registry it is very disappointing to see how widely they disagree on what is an error, so that one tool will find nothing whereas another tool will find hundreds of supposed errors. From experience it would seem that having a load of junk in the registry does not necessarily cause problems. However, if you want to keep a tidy and efficient system then cleaning will help as long as you compact the registry afterwards. Just deleting registry entries does nothing for efficiency, only the subsequent compact action can help here.

Common Registry Problems

Here are some of the more common registry errors that you are likely to encounter.

Missing Shared Dlls

When you uninstall an application there is sometimes a shared dll registry entry left behind in case it was used by another application.

Unused File Extensions

When you uninstall an application there are sometimes unused file extensions and associations that are no longer required. Note that by deleting registry entries of the extension that are no longer in use, it is not stopping XP from using these file types and so is a fairly low risk tidy up.

Registry System Wizard

Recently, I came across Registry System Wizard which has one big drawback in that the application has not got a comprehensive English version. It has a tools section that easily allows you to run standard Microsoft diagnostic tools without having to invoke the run command line. For example, if you need check if any of the critical Windows XP software is not digitally signed you can just click on Programs/File Signature Verification. There are many other features in this software that are worth exploring. You can also use this to test DirectX screen and sound functions using the Microsoft diagnostic tool.

RegAlyzer

Yet another useful utility from Safer Networking that provides a more comprehensive list of features than that supplied by the normal RegEdit application that comes with Windows XP. Improved searching is just one of the features available to enhance the usability. It is still under development and does require the same skills and care as those when using normal Regedit.

Registry Mechanic

This seems to be a highly rated registry cleaner which I tried after using a product called Registry Wizard, which although looked promising had too many rough edges. Certainly Registry Mechanic offers very comprehensive features including a deep registry scan, but it left me feeling that I would have to do a lot of work to ensure that the error list truly represented errors, before I was confident to proceed. I also offers a registry compact facility. It seems to do very well at dealing with File type registry errors compared to some of the others. This would have been my first choice if I had not also tried out AMust (see below).

AMust Registry Cleaner

I have recently tried out version 3.11 of AMust Registry Cleaner which has as its main selling points a safety first approach to removing registry keys and also offers a speedy scan. Agnitum brought this to my attention in one of their newsletters so I decided to give it a try as it boasted to a be a next generation product. Certainly when it ran, it produced several hundred errors in addition to those already found by Registry Mechanic and CCleaner, among these being references to MSDraw which used to be a required component of Microsoft Office. In fact I became so disillusioned when I found out there were wide discrepancies between the various registry cleaners, that I questioned whether or not these were worth while. Eventually after some more research I decided that I liked the safety first approach offered by AMust and also the option to compact the registry. Certainly if you are going to use a Registry cleaner then you must have a product that you can trust otherwise you can spend more time housekeeping than actually using your computer.

CCleaner

It should also be noted that CCleaner can also be used to clean up the registry by removing registry details for removed applications, issues with missing or shared Dll's, fonts, application paths etc. Currently, it tends to do a good job with the simpler registry errors, but it does not provide additional features such as a deep registry scan or offer to compact the registry.