Registry Mechanic

A cluttered hard drive and corrupt registry files can make a computer run much slower and crash more often, regardless of its performance. Regular maintenance is the key to keeping a computer clean and healthy. Removing temporary files and broken or obsolete registry entries may not seem like an important task, but your computer will benefit from this task in the long run. Registry Mechanic's purpose is to keep your computer in good working condition, by fixing various registry issues, cleaning up the hard drive or changing certain settings, to optimize your system for best performance.

The software can be used on Windows XP, Vista and Win 7 and it provides support for both 32 and 64-bit versions. With a CPU of 1 GHz or more and at least 1 GB of RAM, you can run this program without any problems. Its setup file is almost 18 MB, which does not take long to download and the installation process is straightforward and fast.

Registry Mechanic comes with a tabbed user interface, on which you can find a series of performance, privacy and recovery tools, categorized on separate tabs. When you launch the program, you will be greeted by a dashboard, which displays the operating system's overall state, issues that require your attention, as well as options for jumping directly to the appropriate sections, to fix those issues. You can also find a one-click optimization option, which starts several maintenance tasks, one after another. The software allows you to decide what tasks to run, by clicking a series of on/off switches, in the general settings menu.

You can either click the options on the dashboard, to solve system issues, according to Registry Mechanic's recommendations or you can navigate through other sections of the interface and optimize the system according to your own needs. The software can be set to scan the entire registry or specific keys. If it finds any issues, it will display them in a results list and you may click a button to fix them. Other performance tools can be used to compact the registry, disable startup programs and tweak the system for optimal performance or appearance.

In terms of privacy, you can use separate tools to clear the Windows history, as well as your browsing history. Additionally, Registry Mechanic provides you with the means of clearing traces that were left behind by third party applications. You can also wipe the free space on your hard drive and shred files, to prevent specialized applications from recovering deleted data. Safety is another feature of the program. It can automatically create a restore point, before cleaning up the registry. You can also schedule automatic maintenance tasks, enable various logging features and more.