Suggestion for a free Registry cleaner

[Imago]

Hello everyone!

Someone knows a good, reliable and unharming tool to clean Windows 10 registry?

My PC is getting slower and slower and the only reason is a cluttered registry.

I know that "registry cleaner" aren't something that you should use lightly, that's why I'm asking for a little help about it.

I used CCleaner in the past but it seems to create more problems than the ones that it solves.

Thanks for any answer!

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, Imago said:

Someone knows a good, reliable and unharming tool to clean Windows 10 registry?

Yes, just don't use one. Those tools are pure snake oil. 

 

5 minutes ago, Imago said:

My PC is getting slower and slower and the only reason is a cluttered registry.

No it's not. There's something else on your system, likely something like excess programs or filling boot drive. 

[Imago]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

Yes, just don't use one. Those tools are pure snake oil. 

 

No it's not. There's something else on your system, likely something like excess programs or filling boot drive. 

Then I really don't know what's wrong in my system, it take about one full minute to boot up.

I checked everything, uninstalled useless softwares, disabled unuseful services (Windows still has a POTS dialer inside it...), checked autostart apps...

Boot SSD is brand new, filled at about 40%, with just Windows inside it, all the softwares and documents are set to another disk.

All the SATA cables are new and of good quality and the disks are in excellent state.

Perhaps there's something I'm missing her but how can I find what it is?

[Murasaki]

Just for a fact a normal computer these days process over 10000 registry calls a second. There is no way this would slow down a system.

[Eigenvektor]

6 minutes ago, Imago said:

Then I really don't know what's wrong in my system, it take about one full minute to boot up.

You could try using Windows Performance Recorder to analyze startup times: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/wpt/optimizing-performance-and-responsiveness-exercise-2

[mariushm]

Registry is 100% not your problem.

What are you system specifications? What storage, what ram, what video card?   If your boot drive is a hard drive, have you defragmented it lately?   If it's a SSD, does it have some amount of free space? (SSDs can slow down if there's very little free space left)

 

A system may have slow start up if there's some driver timing out (trying to contact a device and it's not responding or responding with bad / corrupted replies). Have you looked in Device Manager to see if you have devices with question mark or warnings?

 

 

[Imago]

To answer everyone:

The PC has a boot 240Gb SSD drive, filled at 40%, softwares are installed in another mechanical disk. Full specs are in my signature down here.

At the beginning of the year the PC booted in about ten seconds, the fact it is getting slower and slower every day.

No new software is installed or uninstalled, all the apps in the PC are installed by me and constantly monitored to be up-to-date.

The firewall is set to not accept connections without my explicit permission, so no background activity could happen.

All the devices are correctly installed and working, no warnings in the Device Manager.

Really, the only thing I can think it's the registry getting cluttered somehow.

 

Somewhere I heard (perhaps from Jay2Centz) that Wise Clenear is a good option, someone tried that?

 

[Needfuldoer]

20 minutes ago, Imago said:

Somewhere I heard (perhaps from Jay2Centz) that Wise Clenear is a good option, someone tried that?

No.

 

Don't run "registry cleaners". They're placebos at best.

[Eigenvektor]

15 minutes ago, Imago said:

Really, the only thing I can think it's the registry getting cluttered somehow.

The registry is simply a database containing keys and values. It's not going to significantly affect the boot speed of your computer, if anything it'll just use a little more storage. It's as if adding more lines to a text file on your computer suddenly made boot times go from 10 seconds to 1 minute, it's simply not a realistic cause.

 

I would recommend to use WPR, which I linked above. Don't guess at what is causing the problem, measure. That's what these tools are made for.

 

Registry cleaners simply delete keys from the registry that they "guess" are no longer needed. If that deletes anything important, it might prevent programs from starting up, or require them to recreate these keys, which could actually negatively impact things.

[manikyath]

2 hours ago, Imago said:

My PC is getting slower and slower and the only reason is a cluttered registry.

cluttered registry doesnt make your computer slower in any noticeable measure.

[whispous]

6 hours ago, Murasaki said:

Just for a fact a normal computer these days process over 10000 registry calls a second. There is no way this would slow down a system.

This is not correct. Just because a number sounds big to you doesn't mean it's relevant.

[Imago]

5 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

The registry is simply a database containing keys and values. It's not going to significantly affect the boot speed of your computer, if anything it'll just use a little more storage. It's as if adding more lines to a text file on your computer suddenly made boot times go from 10 seconds to 1 minute, it's simply not a realistic cause.

 

I would recommend to use WPR, which I linked above. Don't guess at what is causing the problem, measure. That's what these tools are made for.

 

Registry cleaners simply delete keys from the registry that they "guess" are no longer needed. If that deletes anything important, it might prevent programs from starting up, or require them to recreate these keys, which could actually negatively impact things.

I tried that WPR thing, but it doesn't work. I run it, something pops on the screen for an istant, disappears and then nothing.

[mariushm]

Probably because it needs to run with administrative rights.  But again, you're really wasting your time with registry cleaners.

 

Registry isn't even used until you're actually in Windows, if it takes long to get to the windows login screen it's not the registry the problem.

 

Also, the registry is around 10-15 MB in size and it's cached in RAM right away as it's accessed by Windows and a copy is kept in the page file as well. It's a database, records can be accessed super fast, and the system doesn't care about extra records in the registry.  It's like having 50,000 records in an excel sheet and you worry about 10-20 extra rows of data, it makes no difference to the operating system.

 

I'm betting your SSD needs a TRIM to do some garbage collection. Run defrag on it - the Windows defrag won't defragment but will issue a TRIM command which is good.

 

Basically, SSDs wear out from erasing content, so controllers on SSDs try as hard as possibly NOT to erase flash memory cells until there's no other option - they just make a note  that says "this portion of flash memory can be erased if needed " and from then on that memory can't be written to (SSDs need to erase in order to write) so it's like some free space that can't be used to write stuff into it. At some point when the SSD is idle doing nothing, the SSD controller starts looking up what can be erased and erases stuff, placing that memory back into the free space pool.

A TRIM forces the controller to erase all the flash memory that's supposed to be erased, giving the controller more memory space to put data into.

 

Use also resource monitor (Task Manager , Performance, Open Resource Monitor) to see what programs read or write from SSD often, or from hard drive.

You may have a page file set only on the hard drive, or have no page file at all... that can slow things down.  Add a page file on your SSD. 

 

Make sure you have at least 20% free space on your SSD - at 240 GB, you should have at least 20 GB free all the time, minimum.