15-Minute Reviews :: Registry Easy v3.0

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Registry Easy version 3.0 by RegistryEasy.com – A registry scanner to try to aid you in removing the bloat that infects the registry.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Registry Easy – is an excellent Windows Registry Cleaner that easily scans your PC and safely cleans errors & invalid entries that cause system slowdowns, freezing and crashing. Registry Easy repairs registry problems to speedup your computer performance. Make your computer run like new again!

Registry Easy uses a high-performance detection algorithm that will quickly identify missing and invalid references in your Windows registry. With a few easy steps Registry Easy will scan your entire Windows registry for any invalid or obsolete entries and provide a list of the registry errors found. After that you can choose to clean list items with selection or automatically repair them all. For your convenience and protection, RegistryEasy also provides a backup mechanism for any repaired files so that you can easily recover any changes if required.”

Quick Pros

• Interface very simple
• Extra goodies like startup manager and system optimize
• Full registry backup functionality
• Backup is forced upon clicking ‘Repair’
• Scheduler built-in, though questionable if should be used

Quick Cons

• Random blank ‘problem’ with no message or anything is bothersome
• Question scanning ability – Multiple scans to clean
• Gives no explanations of what each scanning feature is, or risks therein
• Could explain errors, and potential risk of repairing that kind of entry
• Seems to essentially only clean empty entries or invalid paths

Expansion

As with any tool which alters system files drastically, I encourage you to tread very lightly, make sure you backup and make sure you are ready to do this; both what you are altering, but moreso all your data in case something goes totally wrong.

With this application, the interface is very simple. On the left of the screen is three buttons – Scan, Backup and Advanced. The first two bring up the respective content to the right of it. On advanced, it brings up a list of 12 tools directly below as well as in the main area of the window. These tools range from startup manager, to tweaking the system, to setting a system restore point and much more. In the scope of this review however, I did not have enough time to test these other features.

One of the biggest parts of all these registry cleaner applications that I feel they need is the backup functionality built-in. This application can fully backup your registry (Sorry, no full system backup tool) and what is nice, is upon your first scan, it essentially forces you to backup, giving you no other option besides ‘Backup Now’ – I guess you could force-close the app, but then scanning still won’t happen.

There appears to be a scheduling function in this application; However, with something so volatile, I would recommend avoiding it; This is the style of application that really needs interaction to ensure your system isn’t being destroyed.

I began to scan my system with all of the settings on (A total of 17 checkboxes) and let it go. When it was done, the application found a total of 417 errors, which all of them (except one) was either an empty registry entry or invalid path. One however, got me stumped. I was scrolling through the list, and I saw an entry that was totally blank, still with a checkbox checked next to it. I left it as-is, and seemed to not have broken anything, though I’m not certain. Every item, including the blank one, came back as Cleaned Successfully. I thought to try to scan again just to see if there was any way to find out more information on the errors or each scan item, and I was surprised that the scan found 72 more errors; They weren’t the same that I could tell. At this point I was curious, and ran another scan, this time resulting in 22 errors. Fourth scan resulted in 14; Fifth resulted in 13; Sixth resulted in 9; And finally the last scan was clean (Including one more to be certain.) While during the first scan, I was not closely watching for which would match, but the last few scans results were different registry entries. This did bother me quite a bit that the application did not clean fully on the first pass; Why I do not know. Each time the scanner appeared to make it through all the steps, so I’m not sure what was going on (Keep in mind that this is the only application running on the system and background applications are kept to a bare minimum). I proceeded to reboot the system and try again. First 61, then 11, then 2 and then clean. Same after a second reboot as the first. The reboots made me wornder if the application is clearing entries that the system does not want removed for some reason. This is indeed baffling and would be interesting to hear from the developer on the reasoning behind this. While my system didn’t cease to function as I could tell, it still made me uncomfortable with the number of scans required; The blank entry that cropped up with no explanation; That after reboot a set of registry keys appeared to be rebuilt by the system; As well as that the application only appeared to clean empty entries and invalid paths only.

A few other quirks with this application is the lack of detail; The application, while forcing backups, does not provide information on what each of the 17 scanning areas is for and the risk of cleaning those areas, nor is there any major disclaimer that the application could potentially damage your system if something goes wrong somewhere. As well, for the errors, it does not seem to go into detail of what the error is, the scanning area it was in (to give a better threat assessment) nor any ‘risk’ assessment based on registry location (A featureset I feel is critical to an application which deals with a part of the system which is so sensitive) – This application will end up being used by those who do not have any or much registry experience and if something is incorrectly chosen, there is the possibility of problems.

Final Verdict

While this application looks like it would be decent quality (with a set of extra goodies tossed in), I became very nervous with the scanning concerns I noted above. I would recommend treading lightly with this tool, and make sure you backup before using it. I’ve had a better feeling about other tools I’ve reviewed in tha past; This one makes me feel uncomfortable about using it due to those scanning concerns noted above. $35 does seem too steep of a price for a good registry cleaner, but if the registry cleaner ran better with more information, mixed in with the extra goodies, it may be worth it at that point; For now, I would recommend aiming for other products.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, August 22, 2007