Sarasota PC Monitor
Registry First Aid 6
A Software Review
byHerb Goldstein
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.If ever there was a need for a computer commandment, "Beware The Puppeteer' would be an excellent choice. At the very least, it's a an important warning and advice for every computer user. Yes, there is a puppeteer built into the Windows operating system. It pulls all the strings that control the functions of your hardware and software. In more familiar terms it's known as the registry. It consists of a voluminous database whose entries comprise the nerve center that mediates all your operating system functions and is the brain behind everything your computer does.
Now that's a pretty tall responsibility for a piece of technical equipment, so the object is not to take it lightly. Chances are that the greatest share of either the malfunctions to total unresponsiveness of your computer is rooted in some discrepancy in the registry. That being the case, you want to be extremely careful when modifying the reistry in any way.
The problem gets stickier when, regardless of risk, your computer requires modification. It does so every time you install, uninstall or even use the software or hardware in your machine. As a consequence, the registry in time often becomes a jumble of useless, antiquated and incorrect information that slows down and impedes its functions and can often prevent its functioning altogether.
The answer to the problem rests in regular registry cleaning and there are more utilities than you can shake a stick at that claim to do just that. But cleaning or modifying the registry can in itself easily lead to greater problems than those you set out to fix. That leaves you with one extremely important caveat: Thou shalt use only the best registry cleaner available!
After considerable experimentation and occasional grief over the years, I have narrowed my registry utilities down to one; Registry First Aid from Rose City software, now in its new version 6. It is the only registry utility software in my opinion and experience after frequent use that I have found to be efficient, fast, easy to use, and reliably safe.
Most registry cleaners available today operate on the premise, "Have faith in us and the almighty." They examine and clean any discrepancies they find without any knowledge or consent from you. The problem is that you are not privy to their findings which can be erroneous or overambitious, causing considerably more problems than they solve.
Then there are the utilities that advise you of their findings but offer you no advice or control on any of the problems they discovered. Registry First Aid is the only utility in my experience that offers a full and complete disclosure of the registry problems it uncovers. It is common for a good registry utility to find a few hundred problems at a sweep. This is followed by a very accurate appraisal and suggestion concerning what to do with each and every one:
- Every item is preceded by a check box that permits you to allow or disallow correction.
- The problem concerned with each and every item is fully explained.
- Suggested corrections are color coded. Green means fully safe to remove. Yellow requires caution. Red means considerable caution.
Advice includes removal of the faulty item or its replacement to a currently valid location from the previous faulty one. For some green items you are advised to just leave them be as they are. You also have the opportunity on each to be taken to the registry itself to view the item in question and to edit the registry directly if you wish. After your perusal of the list of suggested correction and the incorporation of any changes you wish to make, one click fixes all the problems. You are in full control of the entire procedure!
Registry First Aid also makes a complete backup of your registry before making changes, allowing you to completely undo the changes in one fell swoop. It also contains the fastest registry "Find" utility in existence. Enter any word or phrase, and RFA comes up with a complete list of every corresponding reference in the registry allowing you the option to delete them.
Registry First Aid 6, the latest version, is now Windows Vista compatible and even safer, faster and easier to use than ever before. It now finds and fixes more registry errors, and this new version includes Windows Vista support for Windows Vista registry, running in a least privileged environment; display snapshot descriptions in registry snapshot lists; new and improved algorithms giving more thorough searches, and significantly faster performance. Also updated are: options for filtering and sorting found registry entries and an option to scan for errors in all user registry hives.
Registry First Aid is available at www. rosecitysoftware.com/Reg1Aid/ for $27.95. Visit them for more information. :
Copyright 2007. This article is from the June 2007 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.