Registry Utilities Do they Work? A Close look at the Best Registry Repair Software

I'm a pretty skeptical guy. I avoid fads and new things like a passion and don't believe there are quick fixes for anything. This is why when all the buzz around registry repair utilities started to build I didn't believe that they could be a one fix all solution of PC problems.

The majority of sites I found during research only talked about the pros of registry repair software. None presented any of the cons to these computer programs or what they were actually capable of doing to improve PC performance. If I wanted to learn about how these programs could improve performance I was going to have to test it myself. So that's what I did I created a comparison test for Registry Cleaners on my own test PC to decide if these programs really worked. My results? Well they were actually surprising.

The Scan Speed Meant Nothing

I timed all of the registry cleaners I tested to see how long they took to do a complete scan. Times for the full scan were all between one and ten minutes long. With most programs a second scan, which I performed each time to double check the number of errors found, seemed to be faster then the first scan.

The fastest scanner didn't mean the best performance though. My conclusion was that the speed of the scan had nothing to do with the best registry cleaner.

Repairs and Errors Weren't Equal

This really surprised me. The number of errors found during the full scan of my computer wasn't the same number of repairs, or better stated changes made to my registry. The top registry utility made about 60% of the changes found in the full scan. I can only assume that registry cleaners find as many errors as possible so it looks like your computer really needs a cleaning.

Bonus Features Made the Difference

This was the test that really started to make me more of a believer in registry repair software. At this point I had found tiny improvements in performance after repairing all errors found in a complete scan. After running a few of the added features such as file cleaners, evidence erasers and start-up managers I got some pretty good speed improvements.

The start up time for windows® was reduced, also several of my most used applications opened faster. I measured the performance improvement by timing the start up with a computer start up timer so everything was equal.

Final Results

While my test PC wasn't that infected with junk files and registry errors I was able to squeeze out some performance. How ever it wasn't really from the registry repair portion of each program. The improvement came from running the additional programs that came with the software.

My result suggest that you can see improvement using registry cleaners, but be sure to get one with a refund policy in case you don't see big changes.