Registry defrag for 09?

For a long time I've been using Auslogics' free registry defrag, it was small, efficient, and would defrag before loading into the main OS.

For some unknown reason they've decided to make this software paid-for only. Considering I use this software once a month or less (when I defrag the HD with JKDefrag) I'm not willing to pay for it.

So is anyone aware of a good free registry defragger? Note: I'm not looking for a cleaner, CCleaner does it's job fine.

 

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software

EDIT: Nevermind,looks like it's no longer FREE

 

If you click the "Learn More" link, you'll see it's a free *trial*; $19.95 to buy.

 

Yes and the last ever free one used to be available on CNET but I can't find a link anymore

 

Don't Auslogics products install the Ask Toolbar now, or give an option to do so?

You could have a look at NTREGOPT which could be a viable free option?

 

What about:

Quicksys RegDefrag - http://www.regdefrag.com/
Free Registry Defrag - http://www.registry-clean.net/

Have not tried these but you can find reviews on both at Snapfiles (direct link: http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwregtools.html)

Cheers


Balders

 

Hi Folks,

Personally I would suggestion sticking with NTREGOPT (with ERUNT) as suggested by Franklin. You have programs that are truly and fully long-term freeware - no ads, no nags, no diversions - proven and sure. The only downsides are maturity, no further development the last few years. And simply good documentation and FAQ, no forum (I did not find an active, excellent forum for any products).

Interestingly the Brazilian product (Quicksys) web-site has the google scamware ads for the other competitors.

(As I understand, they can easily block those, getting other ads of some repute .. most everybody seems to fall before google and makes little or no attempt to filter to force better ads and google by default will put on scamware competitor ads ! mozillaZine is an example of an exception, where they will note and block many scamwares. The best exceptions are folks like Wilders and Donationcoder .. no ads, all the time. It is true that the scamware registry optimizer industry forces you to block a few dozen sites, perhaps there should be a central repository of site-blocking to help those stuck coping with the ads. At this time even a number of respected techie sites allow the ads leading to scamware. Very strange.)

Avoid little-known companies (one from China, one from Brazil) who have a recent freeware registry defrag program that is going along with another paid product -- a paid product that looks to be seeking a part of the scareware and shamware "registry cleaner" industry. Everybody seems to want a piece of that tainted pie. And if the company does not have a track record -- forums, developers who are visible, open discussions -- then they likely using the defrag simply as a leader to the cleaner programs. Understandable marketing, but for a dubious product.

So in review -- for registry defrag we have three freeware programs above, and a few paid products like Auslogics and Elcor and one embedded in Ace utilities and the dubious Uniblue. Maybe there are a couple of others embedded in utility programs, not sure.

Quicksys (Brazil - 2006-2009 BMSoftware Informática LTDA) has a little forum, apparently that program lacks a backup feature, caution (unless that has changed) and you can .. use ERUNT. Bernardo Porto posts as the developer (there is a minor forum there, a plus) he had an earlier boot-up XP product that led to a couple of complaints, little other mention in English. At least you have a little programmer visibility, his name and post even popped up on a programming discussion board. So that's a bit of a plus.

The two free defrag products from Brazil and China are probably ok as stand-alones (use ERUNT with the Brazilian one) -- however I would strongly suggest staying far away from the "registry cleaner" google-junque industry.

Thus my recommendation: stay with NTREGOPT and ERUNT, especially now that Auslogics is out of the freeware reg-defrag picture. Auslogics does seem to be fairly neat as a company, a bit more diverse. I sometimes pop up their disk defrag and like the way it functions as a background, informative disk defrag. Solid interface and function design, I had tried a few others earlier, so I am pretty warm to them. However I do not see any reason to pay for a new registry defrag program when NTREGOPT is available. (If I was already using their Reg defrag and liked it, I might bite the small $ bullet.)

It seems (from my minimal knowledge) that registry defrag is a good idea once in a while, and since everything involving the registry is rather delicate, you really want to work with a company or product that is shaken out and has been responsive over time.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

You could also take a look at:

Free Registry Defrag 2.35 - http://www.registry-clean.net/

but I would agree with the view that probably the best 'balanced' choice would be NTREGOPT 1.1j. I would not however with all the other comments made by Steven, but do not have the time to get into a debate on the subject.

 

Thanks folks. Old as it is, it seems NTREGOPT is still the perfect solution. Long live, and hope I don't need a '10 thread.

 

Hi Folks,

It's funny. A registry optimization utility is one area where you really don't want a lot of updates, once the program is solid and shaken out. (Except perhaps for a new OS.)

There are not individual entries to put on ignore lists. There are not new folders and things to consider. The job is done. You gonna optimize it to save 5 seconds ? Why bother. You gonna put on a new skin or a new interface ? Wowee-zowee. (Ok, perhaps ERUNT and NTREGOPT could be in one larger interface, does that exist ? And ERUNT should have a config option for the save folder, to remember it from week to week.)

I just thought I would comment about the uniqueness. It works, don't fix it. No updates needed or requested. Very few programs have this aspect, almost everything else cries out for updates in the changing Windows environment.

Anyway, getting off my soapbox, and taking the opposite viewpoint, it is true that Auslogics gives a nice picture, very esthetic. And also properly works on reboot. Is their any downside or ethics/integrity question to using their last free version ? And any known bugs ? What changed ? (Probably Windows Vista, anything on XP ?) Was 5.1.18 freeware or do you have to go earlier ? (Now on 5.2.x.) Ok, I just sent these questions to Auslogics. Also an email to the "Last Freeware Version" site http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html .

Followup: Auslogics says no problem using earlier versions, didn't give the last free version number.

And another possibility.

PageDefrag from Sysinternals (now Microsoft)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx
PageDefrag v2.32 By Mark Russinovich - Nov 1, 2006

"PageDefrag uses advanced techniques to provide you what commercial defragmenters cannot: the ability for you to see how fragmented your paging files and Registry hives are, and to defragment them."

This may defrag but not compact. It would be interesting to look at Auslogics but not run, run PageDefrag, then look at Auslogics again. (With ERUNT at the front-end.)

Ok, from a good earlier Wilder's discussion.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=53084
Defragging Registry vs. Defragging Disk (2004)

From NTREGOPT's help file, the developer mentions:
"Note that the program does NOT change the contents of the registry in any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive (as the PageDefrag program from SysInternals does). The optimization done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the minimum size possible."

This is at:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ntregopt.txt
NTREGOPT - Registry Optimization for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP - v1.1j, 10/20/2005, Freeware - Lars Hederer

==============================

SIDENOTE: In that 2004 thread, RegCompact also gets some mention.
Perhaps we have.

http://www.experimentalscene.com/regcompact/
RegCompact Pro 2.6.6 - Experimental Scene

While to confuse it a bit we have
http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/LFWV/RegCompact.html (note same pic as last url)
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page26.html
RegCompact.NET 2.0 (last freeware version)

A little strange that a registry compactor is using .NET.

Also Daniel J. Werner says freeware at the Experimental Scene site, perhaps that went back-and-forth.

Here was 1.8 on SourceForge
http://sourceforge.net/projects/regcompact
RegCompact.NET 1.8 - Last Update: Dec 15 2005

=========================

So is this it:
The registry itself can be multiple disk files, thus 'defrag'.

NTREGOPT - compacts, no defrag
PageDefrag - defrags, no compact - also does some other system files, including the page file
Auslogics - defrags and compacts

As discussed at:

http://www.abxzone.com/abx_reviews/al/registry.html
How to Safely Compact, Backup and Defragment your Registry - Al "PCBruiser" Weil (2005)

Well, you folks may know all this, I am just learning now .

I think the confusion comes because we think of compacting as a type of internal defragmenting. At least I do. The idea I have is that a registry section (e.g a hive) splits up to various spots, kept together by the pointers. And that a compacting puts the hive, and the whole registry, into a normal sequential order, like we see on RegEdit. So this should be called compacting, not defragmenting, to reserve defragment as a term for the disk files. I think it can be called compacting whether or not it reduces the size much, simply the re-ordering is the key issue, reducing the size the second. (Hmmm...).

An interesting discussion with a lot of mention of the three.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=290661
Anybody here use a registry defragger? 03/2009

And then you have the various disk defrag and utilities programs that include one or both functions. PerfectDisk, O&O and Diskeeper being mentioned in the Wilders thread above, TuneUp Utilites getting a good rap at the guru3d forum but Wilder's folks mention lack of timely support and Ace Utilities selling a "Windows Registry Defragmenter and Compactor" for $15 that is free to those who bought the Ace Utilities. Macecraft (JV16) is changing their registry product line as well, not sure if they handle defrag or compacting. WinAso freeware mentioned in a post below from Wilders. And there are probably more.

Other Wilder discussions.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=229465&highlight=ntregopt
Registry Defraggers (01/2009)

As in this thread, my sense from reading is around is that the compacting seems to occasionally, if rarely, mess up (anti-virus and icons were mentioned and I saw one or two more severe) in most cases you would probably know quickly and ERUNT could restore. One problem is that none of these products has a forum for discussion so the reports are diffuse around the net. One the other hand, one problem with a forum is that it becomes a magnet for every disgruntle, and these are generally free products (recent Auslogic change noted) with good reputations.

Additional Wilder notes:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=227203&highlight=ntregopt
Defraggler lockup causing odd error.
(JkDefragGUI includes NTRegOpt)

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=216436&highlight=ntregopt
Erunt 07/2008

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=198752&highlight=ntregopt
ERUNT and NTREGOPT 01/2008 - FD-ISR situation

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=179019&highlight=winaso
registry defrag 07/2007

iExpert - Registry Clean Express - $30 (cleaning oriented)

WinAso - Registry RegDefrag - compacts and defrags - freeware
http://www.winaso.com/howtouse4.htm

Note in the thread how TuneUp Utilities calls compacting "defrag" so the terminology does get mixed.

And note this from Lars of NTREGOPT (which compacts)
"(registry) physical defragmentation makes very little sense as the files immediately become fragmented again when Windows is next booted."

And there are probably a few more threads of substance. I tried to pull out what might be most helpful.

And I have not decided on my own course of action, I would like to run Auslogics first (or RegCompact if it gives similar information) without update just to have an idea of % gain. I don't think any of this matters too much (afaik .. the registry is brought into memory and is not so big in any case so it is not like tons of extra disk access) but I will probably do an occasional regimen, at least of the compacting. Interesting.

Oh, final count of dedicated freeware registry optimizer, compact or defrag programs that are not part of cleaners, utility packages, and disk defrag programs and such.

ERUNT for backup and...

Big 3 above
NTREGOPT, PageDefrag and Auslogics (last free version)

Two less known:

WinASO RegDefrag - X.M.Y. International - (other products commercial)
RegCompact.NET (David Warner - may be continuation of open source project)

Two new from Brazil and China, discussed above. On these last four we would have to check whether it is compact, defrag, or both, and whether there are other differences of note. One problem is that afaik none of these have an active open discussion forum (a small forum on the Brazil software) a couple of Wilder's folks have talked positively of WinASO registry software, also RegCompact had some mention but years back and has an unusual pedigree. The two other newbies, Quicksys (Brazil) and Free Registry Defrag (China) have minimal history.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

Hi Folks,

Coming out of this thread ... Last Freeware Version has put two excellent Auslogics products on their site.

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html
What's New - March 24, 2009
Added:
Auslogics Registry Defrag 5.1.18.445 and
Auslogics System Information 1.3.18.240

Those folks are pretty good in figgering what is the last freeware and making it presentable and easy. Thanks, guys. The system information is a very nice complement to Belarc and some others .. and it may be more 'free' for business use (I have not checked, but this is a point often missed .. looking for software you can comfortably and safely install on 10 puters at work is a bit different than what you can do at home.. at work a program like Belarc, totally free for home use, is a bit of a no-no without company registration and payment .. which is reasonable $ but not always the best way to go).

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

Question: If you defrag your drive with any of the number of programs that do an offline defrag of your system files; and it then reports zero defragmentation of the system files, has that NOT defragged the registry ?

I'm using Uniblue Reg Booster 2009 (with Reg defrag) and Perfect Disk 10. Neither free, but I can report they work safely.

 

Hi,

I have the possibility to use 'IObit Registry Defrag', which is part of my Advanced SystemCare PRO v3.2.0, but I never use it.

I think registry defrag is useless, even dangerous.


PROROOTECT - a friend who you want good.

PS. To forget, to forget about the registry defraggers ...

 

I am not trying to be the smart ass here, RAD, but did you take the time to first read the thread (and the referenced links) you are posting in?

 

Did you try this: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/freeregdefrag.html

 

??....uhhhh.....yeah.

So you don't know the answer ?

The relevance to this thread is that if you have a free defragger, you don't need a free "registry defragger".

A simple yes or no would probably be less distracting than your "non-smart ass" questioning of my question.
But I am not trying to be a smart ass either. I had a legitimate question.

 

From post #10:

...is what I was wrongly referring to, in my reply, because I had missed the "offline" part of your question:

You are perfectly right RAD, sorry to have badly twisted your shorts, it was not my mean.

So, I have to retract on my post, and should have said that my answer is maybe. Because I am not sure if an offline defrag would also defrag the registry (I would wildly guess yes, but the registry would probably need to be optimized/compacted after anyway), and a quick search didn't give me any satisfying answer either.
So, sure enough, your question was/is pertinent and legitimate, and more, I will also be very interested to read the answear you'll eventualy get...

 

Hi Folks,

There are some fine threads on Piriform and Comodo forums on these issues. Although it may well depend on the offline defrag in use I got the impression that registry defrag (not compacting) would be included in the major products, however I am not 100% sure.

Simple test :

NTREGOPT shows you the defrag fragments numbers of the various system files, including the registry hives. Note how the naming goes if you do this test. (The reason I do not bother with this is that my numbers are low.) Run NTREGOPT, check the numbers, run your favorite offline defrag and check the numbers again. No danger at all, you are not running the program. If they are changed, especially if they are zilched out to one fragment per file, then yes .. your particular offline defrag did the job.

I noticed one other important point in the forums mentioned above. The claim that the registry quickly uncompacts when in use, stuff gets placed here and there, and that the benefits of a compacting utility are dubious. (Wonder if Lars would respond to this.) This would also be an interesting test, although it may be a bit harder to quantify the amount of uncompactization than the amount of disk file framentation (a simple integer). The result may be that a very occasional compacting is worthwhile, or that the whole idea is not worthwhile. I doubt that frequent compacting would ever make sense.

There were also warnings that compacting a corrupt registry could "enhance" the corruption, and even trash away. Thus have your ERUNT doing a backup and your UBCD4 type disk ready to roll before your compacting, and make a note where the ERUNT backup is going. If you have a disk image program, use that too, at least for the first compacting.

Even if the possibility of a problem is very small, those precautions are highly recommended for any actual compacting, although not for simply checking the number of fragments.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

 

Registry cleaners and registry defrag are IMO 99% of the time useless, as in they have no measurable performance impact. Its just another file on disk, Windows has tons of code builtin to optimize the file and disk usage patterns.

 

This statement is completely flaud. You are correct in saying registry cleaners are useless, but compactors and defragmenters are most definitely not.

 

Allow me to climb up next on the soapbox you just came away from.

THIS IS EXACTLY! as i see it where all these program problems completely originate from including security apps. They finally master "THE" one perfect componant and it's been shakenout as you say and solid, missioned completed, then they can't leave well enough alone. They begin to pick at it, pow wow over what they might add to dress it up or entice with a new feature irregardless if the user might suffer an issue from it, they will simply come back with a BUG FIX!, then another, and another, untill the once solid performer is choking all over the O/S from one issues to another.

I completely agree with your overview and support it 100% because it happens to be sadly so very true anymore, Oh i almost forgot, many times it's the customer's, if it's commercial products, that pays for what's now an incomplete project and who knows may always remain that way.

I'm one of those who subscribe to looking back with a long hard look before considering moving ahead with ideas that can prove nothing less then a gamble at best.

Am i off base here? Or does any of this make some sense somewhere?

Thanks, Peace, and Out!

EASTER

 

would a registry defrag ruin Total uninstalled monitored installs

 

Hi Folks,

Can't see why it would have any effect. A Total Uninstall, or any uninstall, is working with the operating system to know the data in a file -- unchanged in a defrag - and the registry data should be unchanged in a compact. Some of the techies here should be able to mention some programs that are defrag-sensitive, but they would have to be working on a lower level than the normal OS functions.

Shalom,
Steven