advanced registry optimizer 2010

I came across the web equivalent of a throwaway "PC tips" newsletter that briefly discussed how to restore the speed of one's PC back to new condition. One of the two article's two suggestions was using Advanced Registry Optimizer (ARO) 2010 to remove obsolete registry entries. ARO has a trial (free) version that detects and removes 100 registry errors; for detection/removal of a higher number, the full-price version must be purchased for $29.95. I tried the trial version, and after the first pass, it claimed to detect 1850 registry errors(!).

My PC is 2 years old and I am the only user. I have installed and removed about 5-10 software programs in its lifetime, mostly outdated antivirus/security software and freeware, and my software turnover is low. I have several questions/concerns:

1. Does 1850 registry errors seem high for a 2-year-old PC, or is the ARO detection claim plausible?

2. If 1850 registry errors is plausible, is removal of this number likely to significantly increase my PC's speed?

3. For those who have used it, is ARO a quality product or are its claims overstated?

4. In general, are registry errors a genuine cause of PC slow-down or are they overstated by software companies eager to sell their wares?

5. If registry errors are worth removing, is ARO a good detection/removal tool or do other registry clean-up programs do an equal or better job, especially the "freeware" software?

I greatly appreciate your reading and any responses.

Thanks,

 

Use ccleaner and forget about this crap.

 

2nd for ccleaner. Make sure you make a back up of the registry before you delete. ccleaner automatically asks you to make this back up so dont skip it!

 

Yes, CCleaners registry cleaner is easily good enough, Save the money and use that.

1. If you've never cleaned the registry this is perfectly normal. Whenever you uninstall software for example, old registry keys are left behind. Over time your registry will have more and more old keys in.

2. You probably won't notice a huge difference, however yes it will increase registry access speed.

3. I've never used it or heard any feedback on it either so I'm not in the postition to comment.

4. Registry errors will contribute to slowing a computer down, however there are many other things that contribute to this as well.

5. CCleaner and Auslogics Registry Cleaner are also both very good, however I've never used ARO so I couldn't comment. Generally speaking most are fairly similar. Paid versions of software will sometimes find more errors but when free software is available you can save money by using them.

 

Cleaning the registry in Vista/Win7 doesn't provide any performance increase as it's a database. (Well same for all previous Windows, as that's the beauty of using databases, but it has to do with the memory management of that OS which makes a bigger registry reduce access time, and one of the reason why under XP and older OS more software you install the system gets a tad slower).

As Vista/Win7 memory management is designed for large amount of memory, the registry is really in your RAM, so access should be instantly.

Cleaning the registry will however:
- Fix potential software problems (rare cases, it has to do more to bad programming)
- Remove left over of old software/drivers settings. Great if you need to perform a clean reinstall of a driver or software.

Total B.S on any system running any version of Windows. Unless you consider milliseconds when Windows starts as "PC slowdown".

If you have performance issue with your system, then probably you run XP or older. You can defragment your HDD which should help greatly. Ah re-install is also the best, as it ensure that you have the latest drivers in your system, and not old driver left over which XP still loads for wtv reason (this issue was solved since Vista), bigger your account profile also slows down your PC (also fixed since Vista), and many small things like these. The easiest solution, is to just re-install XP every now and then. I used to do it every year. Took me quiet a bit of time, especially all those updates. But I ended up with a nice clean system, and fast for a whole year. I usually took a week-end to do a good job. Since I switch to Vista, I don't need to this, as it's way smarter, auto-maintenance, lots of issue fixed, and memory management, designed for system will large quantity of RAM (I mean 1GB+ of RAM).

 

Thanks much for the recommendations. I subsequently downloaded CCleaner and ran it; it seems to work very well--and the price is right !

 

Thanks for your thoughtful discussion about registries and PC performance issues. I use Windows Home Vista, so I was glad to read that Vista is much better at managing its memory. I run a disc defragmentation every 1-2 weeks. When I inquired about registry cleaning, I wasn't sure if my PC had actually slowed down compared to when I first purchased it. The throwaway about PC performance had mentioned that lack of registry cleaning likely caused PC performance degradation, hence my inquiry about registry cleaning and its relation to PC performance. In hindsight, the throwaway article was likely an informercial of sorts for the ARO program.

Thanks again to everyone who responded.