Registry Cleaner?
 

Hi all, I have a fairly new laptop and lately it hasn't been shutting down properly and it just keeps freezing up. I have run adaware, nortons, and de-fraged, but the problem is still there. What next do I run a registry cleaner? I have windows xp and i'm not sure if that's a good idea. Help me arggghhhh....... thanks.

I regularly run 2 registry cleaners, "Registry Fix" and "Registry Mechanic" (one finds things that the other one doesn't) BUT back up the registry first most of the fix programmes either do it automatically or give you the option of doing so.

I have just used Uniblue RegistryBooster for the first time. It found and corrected 329 errors, of what significance the errors were, I have no idea. Google for consumer testing reports on the progamme.

Regscrub is a very easy one to use http://www.sofotex.com/RegScrubXP-download_L7528.html

Where does it freeze up? Where it says "saving your settings" or "windows is shutting down" ?
If you leave it does it eventually shut down? (Or put another way, what's the longest you've waited?)
It implies to me that an application is still "hanging on" to some aspect of the system; that needs exploring, really, though a reg cleaner might do the job.
An application like Process explorer, Asquared hijack free etc can inform as to what is being used at any one time.
Next time you go to shut down, open task manager and see if anything is using significant cpu.