What is a good registry cleaner? Aside from Crap Cleaner of course.
I've used CCleaner myself, rarely though. I used to use TuneUp Utilitys ages ago, that I was really fond of, I've not used it recently though so I don't know how well it has improved, though it's not free.
That in mind I had a look about, found one called
Registry Clean Expert, you can download it from there and I personally tried it on my partners PC. Seems a good little program, you can use it fully for a 15 day evaluation period, after that you would need to purchase it, personally I don't think you'd need it longer than a day or two at most.
After installing and running the program, it recommends backing up your registry, that I did and would
highly recommend you do so too. It doesn't take long at all to back up the registry, I backed the file up in Documents under the folder name "
Registry Backup", the file I named "
REG-BKUP-30-05-2011". After it's done with backing up your registry you're free to roam the program then, but all you need to do is go to
Defrag Registry in the left panel, then follow the instructions on the right panel on what to do, you will need to click on the
Analyze Registry first, then once it's completed analyzing your registry you can then click on the
Compact/Defrag Registry.
Once it had finished for me it shaved a little bit off from the registry
You can also delve further into the program with
Scan & Clean, though it's similar to CCleaner, I've not actually used it yet, if you choose to use it, just go through the findings thoroughly to make sure you're not getting rid of something you might actually need like shared libraries.
I would recommend following theJesus' advice too in the driver incremental updating, also, something I've not asked which I should have before now (chances are you've already done it, but just for my sake really!) we all know you're running Windows Vista x64, but are you running any Service Packs? If you aren't I'd get yourself updated to
Service Pack 2 as soon as possible, otherwise if you have it then we will just take it from there
--Lee
