Registry Easy – A Comprehensive Review

There are so many registry tools around that it is hard to decide which one to use. To help you decide, we took a look at Registry Easy version 4.6. Their product is available through their own website, www.registryeasy.com. Their website claims quite a few features for the product, including history cleanup, optimizer, junk file cleanup, and more. This means the product would be more than a simple registry cleaner, offering features that are helpful in privacy protection as well.

Installation

The download file is only 2.4 MB, which is not too big and means it downloads quite fast. The download file is an installer with an EXE extension, so make sure your download settings allow this type. The installation process makes use of a setup wizard, like most software packages do these days.

Registry Easy Configuration

First we take a look at the configuration options for the software. The options selection brings us to a preferences dialog box with three tabs.

The General Settings offer some common software features. Run at windows startup is not something we recommend as it will slow down your PC startup time. Turning off the automatic registry backup is also not a good idea, so by default it is turned on. Checking for updates is a must for any serious software program these days. Registry Easy allows you to do it automatically or manually.

The Ignore List tab is only useful after you have used the program and actually opted to ignore certain registry keys. Through this interface you can then remove items from the ignore list.

The last tab brings us to the Scheduling feature. This is quite handy as system maintenance needs to be performed at a regular frequency. Having a schedule feature ensures you do not forget to run the registry cleanup at a regular basis.

Program Features

Although the tool is primarily a registry cleaner, the application has a number of different modules. They are nicely grouped on the left side of the application interface.
Under the Scan & Clean section we have:

• Registry Cleaner
• Evidence Cleaner
• Junk File Cleaner
• Duplicate Cleaner

Under Backups we have:

• Registry Backup
• Restore Point

Under IE Tools we have:

• BHO Manager
• IE Restore

The Optimize System group has:

• System Optimizer
• Block ActiveX
• Error Utilities
• Register ActiveX
• Tweak Memory

The System Tools group finally offers:

• Startup Manager
• Uninstall Manager

Some items in the list are more self-explanatory than others, so let’s have a look in more detail to see what they really mean.

The Registry Cleaner

The registry cleanup is of course the primary function of the program. If you start Registry Easy, the registry cleaner module is the default selection. As you can see in the screenshot, there a re quite few categories that you can select from for your registry scan.

We ran the program with all the checkboxes selected. Depending on the maintenance state of your PC, the scan can take up to a few minutes. The results are automatically shown once the registry scan is complete. All registry problems are automatically selected for repair.

The Evidence Cleaner

This module is the second option in Scan & Clean section. When selected, it shows an extensive list of system items it is going to scan for cleanup. By default all scan items are selected, but you can easily deselect individual items, which is convenient if you do not want your MRU list cleaned. The Scan Now button starts the scan, which took less than a minute on a T5600 based laptop.

Again the scan results are immediately shown (and selected) after completion of the scan. The total number of items is displayed together with the hard disk space occupied. A simple click on the Clean button will erase all selected history.
The module again has an exclude list manager, which allows you to modify or delete items in the exclude list.

As you might know, deleting files on a computer does not mean the files or content of the files cannot be restored. This is the result of the way in which files are deleted, which does not actually clean the full file contents, but only makes the file reference and initial content invalid. So the operating system sees the file space as free disk space, but with special tools the contents can still be retrieved. Registry Easy has a very helpful feature as part of the Evidence Cleaner. The Advanced tab brings us to a File Shredder.

The file shredder allows you to add files or folders for which you want to contents to be erased. Even the level of shredding can be set, ensuring the data is really cleared.

The Junk File Cleaner

Another must as part of a serious system cleanup attempt is the Junk File Cleaner. In registry easy, the junk file cleaner allows you to select the drives on which to look for junk files. The actual cleanup process is based on a simple files extension filter. You can add your own extensions for cleanup.

As part of the junk file cleanup process, you can select what to do with the files:

• permanently delete them
• move them to the trash can
• move them to a folder that you can specify

Although limited by the fact that it is only an extension based cleanup process, it is a flexible and useful program feature.

The Duplicate Cleaner

This is a less common function in cleanup programs, especially registry cleaners. But once you think about it, searching for and removing duplicate files on a computer is quite a useful feature. Repeated downloads, temporary copies you forget to delete, Office documents that you save at different locations, there are many possibilities of duplicate content.

The Duplicate Cleaner in registry easy has a number of categories you can select from. The file filter allows you to limit your duplicate file scan to certain file categories. Apart from file name comparison, you include size and date comparison. Lastly, you can specify the file size for files to be ignored. This can be quite good to exclude the small files that do not contribute to freeing up too much space and do take a lot of extra time to scan.

Registry Backup

Considering that the Windows Registry is such a critical part of the operating system, making a backup of the registry is always a good idea. Especially if you plan to make changes or install software, making a registry backup is a good way to start.
The registry backup module in registry easy is simple and straightforward, allowing you to make a full registry backup at the click of a button. Restoring backups is just as simple.

Tip: The full registry backups are stored in a .REG file in the FullBackup folder in the Registry Easy program directory. Depending on your system, these files can be quite big since they are text files. So consider compressing them (ZIP or RAR) when you do not need them and uncompress them if you need them.

Restore Point

The restore point manager is a simple interface to the Windows restore point functionality. All system restore points are listed and you can create and restore any of the restore points. What is really missing here is the possibility to delete restore points. Windows has the ability to remove all but the most recent restore point through the disk cleanup functionality, but it would be really good to have individual control on this.

BHO Manager

This Internet Explorer tool gives you control over Internet Explorer plug-ins. You can select IE plug-ins and remove or restore them. Normally you would not use this a lot, but if you are experiencing browsing problems this is quite a useful way to analyze your IE problem. Internet Explorer errors related to plug-ins can be analyzed by turning off all plug-ins and then turning them back on one-by-one.

IE Restore

If everything else fails, try restoring your Internet Explorer settings to their defaults. If you don’t know how to fix Internet Explorer errors, this IE restore module could help out. The module shows all IE settings it can reset for you, and allows you to select the ones you wish to reset.

System Optimizer

Always interesting these PC optimizer features. In the case of Registry Easy, the program presents you with a category selection to identify your computer use. This module optimizes your PC by turning off services that are not needed for your intended computer use. If you click Fast Optimizer, a predefined set of services is turned off, leaving you with only the required ones. This is certainly one of the typical ways most system optimizers work, disabling services reduces the memory usage and CPU usage.

If you know a little bit more about services, you can select the Next option, which shows you which services are actually turned on and off. If you want you can override the predefined sets and enable or disable additional services. We like this option, since no computing environment is really alike.

For every service you can see a detailed description, which can help you decide on leaving the service on or turning it off.

Block ActiveX

ActiveX is a security threat to every PC. The level of control that an ActiveX module can get on a PC is quite high. In the past there have been quite a few ActiveX controls that tried to exploit the possibilities that ActiveX offers. So never blindly accept download and installation of ActiveX control.
Registry Easy has collected a large list of past ActiveX exploits and offers automatic protection to them. Do note that using this feature means that you need to leave Registry Easy running on your computer. The program only takes 1.5 Mbytes of memory (RAM) when running in the task bar though.

Error Utilities

Like the ActiveX exploits, Registry Easy also has a list of known PC errors and fixes. If you experience Windows errors, you can see if the error is part of the list and use the fix to repair the error. It is a limited list, but we assume it will be extended in future versions.

Register ActiveX

A simple module to re-register ActiveX components. Really only useful if you happen to know that a Windows error you are experiencing is related to an ActiveX component. Re-registering ActiveX components is known to fix some Windows errors.

Tweak Memory

The amount of available RAM in a PC can contribute to performance and the ability to run certain applications. The tweak memory module allows you to optimize the internal memory (or RAM) in your PC. This is a very common feature that basically frees up some memory by forcing DLL’s to be unloaded and other ‘forced conditions’ that the operating system does not enforce.
Although it works, this should be used with care. There are not many situations where this is useful and you can actually harm performance if DLL’s are forced out of memory (they need to be reloaded from disk if they are used again).

Startup Manager

This is really a must for serious computer management. Windows has its own tool for this, but it can always be done better. Having this functionality integrated with a registry cleaner makes sense, since quite a few programs that start automatically do so through registry entries.

The Startup Manager in Registry Easy shows all programs that are started at boot time, along with the necessary program details.

These details can be used to determine the exact function of a program and help decide on the need to run it at startup. Convenient also is that there is a separate list for restoring startup applications. This way you can try and restore things if they don’t work.

Uninstall Manager

Installing and uninstalling software is something everyone has to deal with when using a computer. Windows offers uninstall management through the control panel, but it is convenient to have this functionality integrated into Registry Easy. One especially good feature is that you can remove entries from the list. If you have ever deleted software and the uninstall of the program failed, you can end up with an installer entry that actually can not be uninstalled anymore. You can delete the program directory, but the installer entry remains. With the uninstall manager you can remove these ‘ghost’ entries.

Application Support

Registry Easy has a decent help file. The application interface and functionality are explained, in some cases with more background information. If you do need support, Registry Easy has a support e-mail account on which they claim 24-hour replies.
Their online FAQ is very limited, so not a useful source for support. There is also a blog on which you can search for topics, but our guess is that the support e-mail will get you the quickest answers.
We installed and ran the program on Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and experienced no problems.

Product Price

The basic version of Registry Easy costs $34.95. This is actually a little more than most registry cleaners, which are priced around $30. At the moment, the features offered by Registry Easy do exceed the general set of functionality of most registry cleaners so that is probably why the manufacturers felt the price is justified.

There are options for extended upgrade licensing, which is probably a good idea if the product is updated regularly. The number of payment options supported by Registry Easy is very extensive and they offer an 8 week money back guarantee.

If you are interested in trying Registry Easy, you can download the software product here.