In light of all the interest in Microsoft’s RegClean, I wanted to let you know about an alternative product. I installed and tested an evaluation version of Top PC Tools’ Registry Cleaner on my XP Home box.

Unlike Microsoft’s utility, which deals only with invalid registry keys, Registry Cleaner detects and removes empty keys that lead to registry fragmentation. Here is their description:

The registry can grow but it can never shrink back due to its design. When a registry entry is removed, that entry is simply marked as blank but remains in place, introducing a gap into the registry. the registry becomes more and more fragmented over time.

Registry fragmentation causes overall system performance to decrease. Systems with a fragmented registry will take longer to boot and will use more memory just for processing the registry, resulting in decreased overall performance as other programs are forced to use much slower virtual memory.

To test this product, I installed and ran it first to establish a baseline. It found 330 errors. The scan is very thorough and I like the format of the review list it presented. With the MS version, you have to look in the UNDO files. Next, I ran Microsoft’s RegClean, fixed the errors it found, and ran Registry Cleaner again. It only found 298 errors this time, most of them either empty keys, useless file extensions, or references to other things that no longer exist - so this program is much more robust in its ability to repair the registry. Microsoft’s left a bunch of things behind.

I didn’t bother to repair anything that Registry Cleaner found, since the evaluation version is limited to fixing 20 entries:

Though Registry Cleaner will search all the invalid entries in the system registry in the unregistered version, you will be able to remove only twenty invalid entries. To remove all the invalid entries from system registry, you need to buy the full version of Registry Cleaner.

That’ll cost you US$29.95 plus shipping. Since I don’t purchase software simply to review it, I cannot make a recommendation to buy it. I’ll see if Top PC Tools will provide a full copy for review. If so, I’ll run it through its paces and write a complete test report. If you’d like to evaluate the trial version for yourself, you can download it here.