Readers Questions.
IF01696
Q.
I am considering the use of a registry cleaner. Nothing tragically wrong
with my PC, except it is just a little slower than it used to be. I am
running XP Home edition, AMD Athlon64 2400, 738b RAM.
I am slightly more knowledgeable than novice and don't mind tinkering. Regularly
do the basic clean ups, scan / defrag, etc.
Looking on the WWW, I am cautious about reg' cleaners, I am getting the feeling
that they can do more harm than good. Or very little at all. But I am not
deterred.
Your opinion here would be appreciated. Do you think that they are worthwhile?
If so, do you recommend any particular product?
My best guess so far is XPMedic.
Thanks in advance.
A.
Your caution is warranted. Most registry cleaners are
spyware of some kind. I
am sure that there are some decent reg cleaners out there, but I don't know
which ones, as I have never run one. I don't really think that cleaning the
registry will be all that helpful in speeding up a slow computer. I think there
are other things to try that would be more effective.
I would first recommend a visit to
http://www.PCPitstop.com and run their
full battery of tests, which is free. They offer some nice recommendations on
how to speed up your computer and I use them regularly.
Also, visit
http://www.sysinternals.com (you will
actually be redirected to a Microsoft site because Microsoft bought SysInternals,
but the utilities are still very useful). Find, on the SysInternals page, a
utility named PageDefrag. This is a very neat utility that will defrag your
pagefile, registry files, and other system files. These are typically files
that are in use when you run a defragger and cannot be defragged. I use
PageDefrag's "run at every boot" option. It only adds about 30 seconds at most
(most of the time it is only a couple seconds plus whatever delay is configured
for the defrag to start) onto a bootup.
Other than that, the only advice I have for speeding up your computer would be
to buy more memory. More
memory is the best way to get a very noticeable
performance boost.
Let me know if you need anything else.
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