Registry Mechanic product reviews

I have always been wary of tools that mess around with the core functionality of a Windows-based system... it's all too easy to mess things up and cause the system to crash, fail, or just plain break beyond repair. Software shouldn't do that... that's *my* job.

So it was with some trepidation I installed this onto the test rig. Installation was extremely simple and fast, taking less than a minute from double-click to "ready to start work"... which also included a full system scan! On a nearly-fresh install of Windows XP I was expecting to find maybe 20 or 30 issues to fix, especially as it had only recently been cleaned up after testing some anti-virus software. So it was with some shock that RegMech reported back on a whopping 528 issues that needed repair! Most of which turned out to me 'orphan' entries, pointing to files that were removed as part of the virus cleanup.

A compulsory reboot later and I was ready to see if things had improved... alas no. As soon as I opened up my first application things locked up and the system went into melt-down mode. I had to do a hard-reset just to get it to respond! However, after the second reboot, it was all running smoothly again... I guess Windows just needs that 'second chance' to come to terms with a leaner, smoother, more efficient registry array. Poor thing.

Boot time was down 14 seconds, the system doesn't 'hang' at random any more, and I was FINALLY able to complete uninstallation of a couple of unwanted applications that were having 'conflicting emotions' about some of the orphan registry entries that were now no longer evident.

Overall, I find this product to be quite a novel and potentially vital piece of system maintenance software. A couple of highlights are the shortcuts to handy system resources and tools, such as Hardware Manager, Disk Manager, and various sub-system monitors. One slight worrying point is the way that the system appears to go into shut-down when RegMech is scanning the registry for optimisation possibilities... you know the drill, all your desktop icons vanish and the wallpaper fades to grey... don't panic, it all comes back in a few minutes after the scanning is complete.

Having used other free registry cleaners before with a degree of success I was quite excited to give this tool a whirl.

First thing I noticed was how easy and quickly the installation was, I had it installed in under 30 seconds, and registration was just as easy.

So once it was installed I let it loose and sat back and waited to see exactly how bad my registry was. The scan system is nice and graphical and lets you know where it's at and how bad things really are with a very easy to read display. Once the initial scan had finished to say I was surprised and what it picked up is an understatement - 602 faults, however I let it do the clean up, next it was onto the optimization function, I must admit I had expected a bit more information rather than just changing a button from Optimize Your System to Reset Optimization, but on reflection it doesn't really need more than that. I then decided to compress the registry as the next step in my system optimization, once again your are given a nice interface of what's about to happen and then the good 'ole Do you wish to do this question, answering yes will result in your system looking like it's about to shutdown and then the actual scan and compression takes place (please note this can take some time depending on your registry size), once the compression is complete a reboot of the PC is required to reindex the registry (you will not notice any improvement in boot time on this reboot a final reboot is required to see if there was any improvement to the system.)

Well on the final reboot my system startup time had improved by 20 seconds which is not too bad at all.

One of the other features in this program are the ability to tuneup and optimize your windows services, this tool offers to options the first is a recommended set of services which turns on the ones you want and turns off the ones you don't - very handy, the second option is the minimum option which will basically turn off any service that windows doesn't aboslutely need to run, this is good if your going for speed, but be warned turning off some services can be detrimental to some programs you have installed on the system, however there is a restore function which will revert all your services back to original condition if you find something suddenly ain't a workin'.

I'm now officially impressed by this wee tool and am off to install it on some more of my PC's in the office.