Is there a completely free registry fixer?

[Eulogy]

I don't want to have to pay for Mircosoft's mistakes, nor spend actual cash money on someting that should have been shipped or downloaded for free. Yet all of the registry error fixers I tried are shareware.

Does anone know where I can get a completely, truly free registry fixing program?

[Stark]

What do you mean by 'fix'?

If it's shareware, why would you need it after it fixed the registry? Do you regularly 'break' it?

[Eulogy]

What do you mean by 'fix'?

If it's shareware, why would you need it after it fixed the registry? Do you regularly 'break' it?

You know how machines that run Windows get slower and less stable the older it gets? My understanding is that it is (at least in part) because of invalid or screwy registry entries.

And I don't break it. The shareware I've tried will only fix a capped number of errors, requiring you to pay money if you want to fix them all. I'd like to be able to keep my machine running fast and stable for as long as it lives.

[Stark]

Oh, you mean you're using XP? The solution there is 'don't use XP'. Registry rot/windows rot is pretty much a thing of the past, kept alive by L33T HAXX0RZ nerds talking about it. Win7 is even free, lol.

If you're just looking for registry cleaners (ie removing broken links, redundancies, etc) there are plenty of free ones, or just use the registry cleaning bits of something like Spybot.

[Eulogy]

or just use the registry cleaning bits of something like Spybot.

I didn't even think of looking there.

[phongn]

You know how machines that run Windows get slower and less stable the older it gets? My understanding is that it is (at least in part) because of invalid or screwy registry entries.

Not true.

And I don't break it. The shareware I've tried will only fix a capped number of errors, requiring you to pay money if you want to fix them all. I'd like to be able to keep my machine running fast and stable for as long as it lives.

Tools like registry cleaners, "performance optimizers" and other such nonsense usually don't do anything of the sort.

[Edi]

Ccleaner does a decent job of removing invalid entries that point nowhere, often left behind when programs are uninstalled.

If you get corrupted registry entries or other problems that re different from these dead end stubs, it can't help you. It's freeware. Use at your own risk, though I've never had a problem with it.

[Hawkwings]

You could always do a nuke and pave every year or so. I used to reinstall XP just about every year, but after I went to Vista I really haven't bothered. I also use Ccleaner for general purpose cleaning.

[Darth Wong]

This tool will completely clear out your registry:

[Stark]

For a momemt I thought that hammer was branded 'truther'.

[Eulogy]

Leave it to Mike to be patient with those who seek knowledge, even when he's kidding. It's a good thing he has a sense of humour!

He IS kidding, right?

[Natorgator]

Not sure about repairing your registry, but CCleaner is a fantastic tool for clearing out old shit in your registry, among other things.

[Spyder]

Registry keys don't really have much of an impact on performance. There are situations where they can but very unlikely on home PCs. If you'd like to get a better understanding of the registry, open up regedit and have a browse through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software. The settings in there are usually understandable and will give you an idea of what the registry actually does.

If you're feeling brave and have your windows disk handy, have a play.

Here, have some homework.

[Oskuro]

This tool will completely clear out your registry <pic snipped>

Dammit, wich part of "completely free" didn't you understand?

Alternative: F = Gm1m2 / r2

[Xon]

Registry keys don't really have much of an impact on performance.

The hilarious thing is; deleting stuff out of the registry is unlike to make the registry smaller. After deleting something, the space is still allocated to the registry and you get internal fragmentation (not to be confused with fragmentation on the filesystem).

Since the registry is a high-performance, indexed, on-demand loaded database, the size really doesn't matter. If you need memory, it just discards pages as required untill something asks for some data from the registry. It co-operates closely with the virtual memory system and the global filesystem cache to ensure registry memory pages are not written to your page file or taking up memory something else needs.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Oh, you mean you're using XP? The solution there is 'don't use XP'.

People usually use XP for a reason like not having a system that would run Vista satisfactorily. As for Win 7 -- it's a beta OS and beta OS'es are for testing purposes only for a reason, no matter how many positive previews are floating around the web.

For the OP: just reinstall XP. It's not really that huge effort.

[phongn]

As a small nitpick, Windows 7 RTM is out.

[atg]

Oh, you mean you're using XP? The solution there is 'don't use XP'.

People usually use XP for a reason like not having a system that would run Vista satisfactorily. As for Win 7 -- it's a beta OS and beta OS'es are for testing purposes only for a reason, no matter how many positive previews are floating around the web.

For the OP: just reinstall XP. It's not really that huge effort.

I've been running the betas of Win 7 since release and am now running the final RTM (thankyou Technet). The betas were perfectly stable from my experience and those of my work colleagues. I guess you didn't actually bother to try it yourself considering your comment.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I've been running the betas of Win 7 since release and am now running the final RTM (thankyou Technet). The betas were perfectly stable from my experience and those of my work colleagues. I guess you didn't actually bother to try it yourself considering your comment.

I have been hearing the same story since the beta test phase of NT5 a.k.a. Windows 2000. For the most part it's probably true, but without detailed information about the hardware and applications used in the (allegedly) stable systems we can draw no meaningful conclusions. It does appear that Win 7 betas were reasonably stable (at least more so than Vista betas) and the RTM version should be even more stable, but running a beta level OS is still not good practice in any kind of production environment.

[Xon]

Windows 7 is little more than Windows Vista Sp2 r2. It is a pure marketing reasons they actually rename it. to Win7.

Win7 should be damn stable given it is only incremental changes to Vista.

[Stark]

Well, they need to make you pay for the not-hopelessly broken UI somehow.

[bobalot]

Look up CCleaner on google. It's got a registry cleaning tool and its free.

[Stark]

Nothing like posting something already posted a bunch of times, huh?

[bobalot]

Nothing like posting something already posted a bunch of times, huh?

Ah, sorry my bad. I saw the first few posts glanced through and saw the hammer and thought everybody was taking the piss.

[Sriad]

If you reinstall, be sure to save all your current drivers and the Windows Service Packs to a separate partition or external hard drive. Last time I did it I backed up personal data, but dropped the ball on some critical updates and couldn't finish the process until a few days later.