Registry cleaners - any recommendations?

[Groundgripper]

I came across a registry cleaner - Uniblue - this morning which offered a free scan and told me I had several hundred things wrong which needed to be put right. Inevitably, when invited to do so, it removed about ten and said it would it would deal with the rest when I bought the full product, an offer which I was fully expecting!
I googled on registry boosters and cleaners and came up with several similar offers on similar terms, one of which got into a fight with Spybot when I tried to use it.
Has anyone got any recommendations as to which, if any, are worth purchasing or, better still, know of any free ones? I've had a scan through the free software sticky at the top of the forum list but could see nothing obvious.
Or should I leave well alone?!
Ta ever so,
GG

[Out Of Trim]

I would steer clear of these type of paid for type programs.. They may well be flagging up problems that don't exist; to make you part with your cash!

I do use C Cleaner - You can get a free download from here (http://www.ccleaner.com/)

It generally clears out most of the accumulated rubbish and also can check for any registry problems. You should back-up the registry before allowing it to delete the problems. The back-up routine is offered at the time.

[green granite]

I use registry booster (uniblue) and registry mechanic (both free off of a magazine disc) Interestingly, I find that running one of them will find and fix say 50 errors then run the other and it will find a load more, so it's worth having 2 or 3 different ones and running them one after another.

[HuntandFish]

The pop up message that says you have a registry problem that can be corrected by buying some software is quite a common virus type problem and can be difficult to get rid of !

[oldbeefer]

I have used CCleaner and RegScrubXP for years - both great (and clean) programmes and free!

[frostbite]

I normally use Tweak Now Registry Cleaner - does what it says on the tin without any fuss and offers auto backup.

[Groundgripper]

Ah, showing my ignorance here - I didn't realise that CCleaner did the same as these other programs in terms of repairing the registry rather than just clean the muck out of the machine! I've used CCleaner for some years and am continually amazed at the amount of rubbish it gets rid of each week.

The pop up message that says you have a registry problem that can be corrected by buying some software is quite a common virus type problem and can be difficult to get rid of !

Actually, it wasn't a pop-up, but an e-mail from Winzip advertising Uniblue which looked (and, I think probably was, genuine). It was only my natural curiosity that made me investigate further.

Thanks for the recommendations,

GG.

[Tarq57]

Agree with Frostbite, never had a problem with the reg cleaner in Ccleaner (click on issues; should offer to make a backup) nor TweakNow.
Advanced Windows care, by Iobit seems pretty darned good, too.
Opinion is fairly divided about using reg cleaners at all. I do, but a lot of fairly canny people say best not to.
Think I borked my OS a coupla years ago by overenthusiastic reg cleaning, it definitely can be done.

[P.Pilcher]

Yes, CrapCleaner seems to work well for me as well. I have got two registry ceaners and paid to have them. They found hundreds of "critical" registry errors and fixed them. As a result the speed of my computer was totally unaffected! I have now been using thefacilities of (free) CrapCleaner now for over two years and everything continues to work well. On rare occasions I get one of my registry cleaners to check the registry - as usual it finds tons of errors, but I can't wait while it fixes them and just cancel the program.

P.P.

[Keef]

I can confirm the above!

My laptop was playing up last week, so I did the free trial of several of those. One found over 2,000 things that needed sorting, another about 1,500, another just under 1,000 - and so on. All wanted money to fix the problem.

I looked at the list of problems they wouldn't fix without payment - most of it was cookies, browser history files, and the like. There was nothing that I would class as "serious".

CCleaner did a job in clearing out about 200 bits of junk. It also stopped my Jeppesen USB GPS card writer from working :( Fortunately, I managed to fix that.

The machine is no faster than before, and the original problem wasn't fixed by any of those packages. Some Googling told me the Registry entry to delete, and all is well again.

[Tarq57]

Keef, just for info, what was it that promised so much, yet delivered so little?

[extreme P]

http://www.macecraft.com/

JV16 Powertools is a great program for $30.

[Keef]

I don't remember now which was which - I Googled, downloaded several to try, and dumped them all.

They all offered to remove some irrelevant stuff for free, and would do the rest if I parted with $30 or whatever. Most of the download sites seemed to be slagging off the others in the same business, saying how theirs was useless etc. Not impressive.

[Jumeirah James]

Uniblue registry cleaner is very good. I've been using it now for 6 months and it really gets rid of a lot of registry problems that have caused me to have crashes, freezes etc.