In my experience one of the biggest areas of hype is the Registry Cleaner. I have tried many of the “free” ones and several of the paid versions. In recent years I have cleaned hundreds of Windows Registry’s for friends, family and customers – I think that qualifies me to give an accurate critique.

My advice is this:

1) NEVER use a “free” registry cleaner unless you have researched it thoroughly and found some good, reliable recommendations. Most “free” registry cleaners come loaded with surreptitious adware or malware and although a short-term performance improvement might be seen, the chances are that soon your computer reliability and security will both be compromised. This is often true for other forms of “free” downloads including music files, free virus cleaners, free games and screen savers.

2) More than half of the “free” scans I have tested report what we know in the trade as “false positives” – this is where the vendor attempts to hoodwink you into thinking you have problems and assures you that they will be fixed when you purchase the software. So beware of “free” scans.
Nearly all “free” scans will merely report problems but will not fix them.

3) The Windows Registry is an incredibly complex piece of technology – so complex that there are relatively few experts in the world who truly understand its deeper workings. Registry cleaning is a highly specialised and delicate operation – don’t make the mistake of trusting just any program to do the job properly. Do some research first. 95% of what I read about Registry cleaners on the web today is utter bunkum.

You should expect to pay between $18 and $50 dollars for one of the best – but no more.

I use “Max Registry Cleaner” and it’s the best I can find anywhere.

Nigel Goodwin