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Registry Mechanic

Price:  $29.95

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With Registry Mechanic you can safely clean, repair and optimize the Windows registry with a few simple mouse clicks! Problems with the Windows registry are a common cause of Windows crashes, slow performance and error messages. By using a registry cleaner regularly and fixing registry errors your system should not only be more stable but it will also help improve your system performance without expensive hardware upgrades. Learn more about the importance of a clean registry with our registry insight.

Registry Mechanic uses a high-performance detection algorithm to quickly identify missing and invalid references in your Windows® registry. These problems can occur for many reasons including being left-behind after the un-installation or incorrect removal of software, by missing or corrupt hardware drivers, or orphaned startup programs.

With a few easy steps our registry cleaner will scan your entire registry for any invalid entries and provides a list of the registry errors found, you can then choose to selectively clean each item or automatically repair them all. For your convenience and protection Registry Mechanic can also make a backup of any repairs made so that you can easily recover any changes if required

 My personal experience with Registry Mechanic

By Tony Angiola
*Installed on the XP Pro Operating System, Windows 7 review coming soon.

Installation

 The installation was very smooth and intuitive. I did not see anything confusing nor any strange settings or terminology that I did not understand. Below I break down all the settings, options, and give recommendations beyond the defaults if your the type of person that really likes to dive deep into programs.  For the average user the defaults work just fine.

Program

Optimize:
Upon launching the program I was able to see several tools, all easily understood as far as their function.  On the left are main icons that show sub icons to the right.  The first "Main" icon called "optimize" showed tools in the main window; Registry Cleaner, Tune up, System Monitor, Defrag, Optimize, and Restore.

Monitor:
The next "Main" icon on the left is "Monitor".  Sub choices are Monitor Registry, Event Viewer, Manage Services, Performance Monitor.  These are Windows tools that are available to you without using Registry Mechanic but its nice that they have included them here in an easily accessed location so you don't have to look for it on your PC.

Windows Tools:
Again just as the title states, these tools are also available on your PC without this program but they have grouped them here so its easy to find.  I Don't want you to think that your getting all these tools for free as part of the program but understand that they did locate them for the user that may not be familiar or even know that they existed.

Help Center:
This button uses the built-in browser which takes you to the help center on the web.  The Windows Registry Guide also takes you to a web page using the built-in browser to get you additional information on the registry.

Options:
Choices here are Settings, Restore, About, and Smart Update. 

Settings 
General:
You can choose if you want the tool to perform creating a System Restore Point before proceeding with the operation.  I would recommend doing this so that you have some peace of mind knowing that you have some additional safety before making a change in your registry.  As you may or may not know, altering your registry in the wrong way can be disasterous.  You should always keep a back up of your data on an external device such as a USB drive.  The next check mark is remove all problems automatically.  I do not recommend this as I believe you should see what issues the tool has found before removing them.  Log scanning is automatically checked.  You can also open a log file from this screen.  You can choose how the program starts when Windows starts from here as well.

Custom Scan:
This section is straight forward and lets you choose which sections you would like the tool to scan.  The defaults here look pretty good but I added the scan of temp files and shortcuts.

Scanning Paths:
The path tells the program where to look for files.  In addition to the defaults I added the check box for Desktop and My Documents.

Ignor Lists:
I did not add anything here.  If your a programmer and use special tools, programs or are writing something that may be look upon as something the tool may flag as an issue you may want to specify that here to avoid problems down the road.  If not you will have to take a close look at items found before deleting.  Always make a backup of your registry to be safe.

Monitor:
This section is pretty self explanatory.  It monitors your system in certain locations to protect you from malicious modifications and changes in general so that you are aware of things that may be happening in the background.  You can change the treshold of notification depending the number of captured events.  The lower the threshold the quicker the notification.  You can also opt to not have your system monitored by unchecking the box at the bottom.

Restore
This section will show you each registry backup.  You can simply click the desired back up to restore and click the restore button below.

Smart Update
Clicking this button will have the program immidiatley start checking for updates.  Its important to have the program current to stay on top of changes and know how to deal with all the updates that Windows sends us.

About
This section will provide you with information on your version number, engine, and framework.   It will also display your license information. 

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