Advanced SystemCare is a package containing a suite of tools all designed to keep your system clutter free and running smoothly with the added protection of a spyware blocker.

It’s getting increasingly rare to find standalone registry cleaning programs nowadays as that section of system repair is becoming increasingly amalgamated into more complete packages that do a whole range of tasks. While this is no bad thing but if you are after a sole registry cleaner then looking for one is just getting that little bit harder.

Advanced SystemCare Main Screen

So let’s have a look at what Advanced SystemCare has to offer.

On the left you have five circles labelled Home, Maintain Windows, Diagnose System, Utilities and Care! And on the right is a more traditional screen which changes depending on what circle you click on. The screen above is on the ‘Home’ circle, you can also see along the bottom Upgrade and Turbo Boost, Upgrade is for changing the free version to a fully paid up program (Pro version) and Turbo Boost switches off any unnecessary services that you may have running however you may find things don’t work such as windows updates and your printer because Turbo Boost has turned them off. On the right are the Exclusive Features which again are only available if you upgrade to the paid version. Do not fret if you think the free version is a restricted ‘an almost waste of time unless you buy it type’ because you what you get is a very comprehensive cleaning utility with many features.

Maintain Windows

This is the spring clean section of the program which handles four areas of cleaning.

Spyware Removal, Diagnose System, Utilities and Care!

Spyware Removal

Activating the scan Advanced SystemCare will purge your system of known spyware and will also block the spyware in the future, also the list is constantly updated against new threats.

Registry Fix

This will do the usual, find and fix invalid shortcuts, missing application entries, start up entries, active x components and the more advanced stuff such as MUI cache and Classes.

Privacy Sweep

This cleans away tracking cookies and the calling cards from numerous programs, works on all the major Internet browsers and application software.

Junk Files Clean

Deletes the files found in the usual temp directories including those belonging to Internet Explorer.

Maintain Windows section finding problems after a scan.

It is worth noting that when any scan has been initiated a backup is always performed with a restore/undo option if and when you need it.

Diagnose System

Again this brings four sections which will help with optimization and check your security.

System Optimization

Adjusts settings to give you the best performing system, unable to find out what it tweaks but my guess is that it gives greater CPU priority to either systems tasks or application services depending on your usage.

Security Defense

Obviously American based with their spelling of the ‘defense’ with s instead of a c. Anyway this is just like the standalone spyware packages out there that have a huge list of known spyware programs and get blocked from ever installing or hijacking the system.

There are three areas inside Security Defense which are all updated with the latest definitions when you scan.

Disk Defragment

Your regular disk defragment application, the Pro version has a IObit smart defrag option which runs its patented version of disk defragging. Those that have heard of Diskeeper will know that it runs in the background continuously analysing and performing disk operations and this is the same kind of application.

Security Analyzer

This checks the critical and commonly known areas for malware attacks and hijacks, speaking of which the contents here can be copied and pasted into HijackThis analyser or can be pasted into the HijackThis forums to be scrutinised by the experts to check that your system is safe.

HijackThis checks your system for any malicious activity and is considered to be one of the best for finding sneaky intrusions.

Diagnose System for checking security and optimising your computer.

Utilities

This section has a large range of apps or plug-ins (twenty-five) that provide a number of functions to further clean or optimize your system. I won’t go into details on each of these apps but having these included with the main program boosts the functionality of Advanced SystemCare incredibly.

There are three sections;

Tune Up

Disk Check, Disk Cleaner, Disk Doctor, File Shredder, Game Booster, Internet Booster, IObit Security 360, Smart Defrag, Network Monitor, IObit Registry Defrag, Shortcut Fixer and Smart Ram.

Security

Driver Backup, IE Security Assistant, System Backup and System, File Checker.

Admin Tools

Auto Shutdown, Cloned Files Shredder, Context Menu Manager, Disk Explorer, Restore Centre, IObit Uninstaller, Startup Manager, System Information and Windows Manager.

From the list there are some real useful utilities, Smart Ram for example frees up any Ram that has been retained by Windows that should have been released, you have the obligatory registry defrag as well and Disk Doctor which is scandisk by another name along with many others, some other options are much more suck it and see. The Game Booster, apparently tweaks your system so that it gives priority to CPU and graphic tasks but this is something I haven’t tested so you may see a difference or not.

The Utility page with the Tuneup apps, some apps need to be downloaded to run.

Care!

The big Care! button in the middle is basically a start button which kicks off the Maintain Windows and Diagnose System utilities, just hit that every week or so and Advanced SystemCare will run through all the tasks and fix any problems that it finds.

Free or Pro Version

The free version has all the features working but some are limited in their functions, this only applies to a small number; the main benefit of getting the Pro version is most of the tasks can be done automatically running in the background or placed on a schedule. The Pro version does give you a deeper registry clean and their smart defrag system. If you don’t mind hitting the Care! button manually once a week or so then the free version will do fine.

Conclusion

Advanced SystemCare is an incredibly comprehensive suite of tools that genuinely helps your system to perform better, yes many tools are already built-in to windows if you know where to look or how to use them but Advanced SystemCare provides a simple, easy to use interface and a sensible selection of tools to give any system a thorough overhaul all in one tidy package.

The tools used are of a real benefit to the point that many computer techies install the free program onto their client’s computers, and what of the price for Advanced SystemCare Pro? Currently it is at $19.99 although normally it retails for $29.99 however when I have a look at their download page they always seem to have a discount so if you do see at full price then just wait a while for it to come down.

The free Advanced SystemCare almost defies belief when you can pay to have a similar product with less features and the Pro at $19.99 really does undercut all the competition in its class but without the compromises. The negatives that I have mainly apply to the Pro version in that it boasts 200 to 400% increase in system speed which I find is totally unrealistic, yes it can certainly speed up a slow burdened computer riddled with spyware and gigs worth of temp files but it would have to be a real dog of a system to get that kind of improvement after running Advanced SystemCare. The speed of the program is another plus, all tasks are accomplished very quickly with only the defrag function taking any length of time.

My recommendation? Get the free version and if you really like it buy the Pro.

You can get the Free Version of Advanced SystemCar here…

A very short guide to creating your registry keys but comes with numerous tweaks as well.

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/regfiles.htm

Office 97 – 2003 registry hacks

Just a few hacks some may find useful.

10 Windows registry hacks for Microsoft Office

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/registry2007.html

Windows XP

Some of these hacks or tweaks may overlap from the post I had written a little while ago but the sites below are well worth a visit.

http://www.registryonwindows.com/ten-registry-edits.php

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

http://www.logicclub.com/50-windows-xp-registry-hacks-worth some are advanced.

Vista

Some of the hacks are related to network logons.

http://thecomputerboss.com/2009/07/windows-10-registry-hacks-that-make-vista-less-sucky/

Windows Vista and Win 7

http://www.fiveanddime.net/windows7-notes/index.html

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/20-registry-hacks-to-make-your-pc-more-awesome-590803

Updated Win 2000, 2003, 2008 and XP Hacks

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsVista/RegistryTips/RegistryHacks/

There is a lot to wade through there if you go through every link which I suggest you don’t really do unless you have all the devices or systems listed and you are a registry hacking junkie. The idea is to bookmark them or use them as a resource if you have a need to get round a specific problem or you are after to get a more responsive system for example by turning off the fade effect on the Start Menu display.

Always back up your registry first before trying these tweaks/hacks to your system and don’t apply them if you have no need to.

One option, if you have the time, is to run a virtual machine on your system or several in fact and then hack and slash the registry to bits or methodically apply the hacks you want or are interested in and see the effects before applying them for real on your live system. Still back up your registry though, using virtual machines or not.

Mobile Devices

To edit the registry on these devices you will need to download certain programs that will give you access. Examples are PHMregedit, SGS Explorer and Total Commander.

Windows Mobile 5

http://wiki.modaco.com/index.php/Windows_Mobile_5_Registry_Tweaks

Windows Mobile 6

http://cellphoneforums.net/windows-mobile/t299843-windows-mobile-6-tweaks-hacks.html

Windows Mobile 2003, 5 and 6.1

http://www.pcoperative.com/ppc/registry_tweaks.htm

Zune non USA users

I don’t possess a Zune but non US owners have certain functionality removed from their systems apparently and this hack will bring some of them back, as far as I can tell there is nothing illegal in doing the hacks, you are simply activating the disabled functions just by entering a ‘1’ value instead of a ‘0’.

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54046

HTC Universal Registry Tweaks

http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=HTC_Universal_Registry_Tweaks

Sony PSP Hack

Not so much a registry hack but a way of getting to the recovery menu and from there you can alter a myriad of settings on the PSP to customise them to suit you.

http://www.pspmod.com/forums/psp-firmware-guides/23760-guide-recovery-menu-explained-admin-note-change-faq.html

The only immediate difference between regedit and RegeditX is the last tab, this is where RegeditX Crawler lurks and it is this that provides the blazing fast searches.

I searched for Microsoft Office and it found 2242 total entries in less than twenty seconds, over a thousand in fewer than seven seconds. When compared to other registry programs it is extremely fast.

You can specify the searches to narrow it down further and for what keys or values to look for. The combo box (just like an address bar) remembers the history of previous registry searches so you are able to just click the dropdown arrow and bring up a list of strings, keys or values you have been to. If you fly around the registry then this list is going to grow substantially and it would be wise to bookmark the often visited entries.

It’s a neat little add on especially if you need to do a lot searches in the registry.

Some of you may be thinking Christmas has come early with all the above being free to use and I thought I had a hat-trick of freebies here but not so RegeditX. It is currently in Beta and once it becomes a fully-fledged program then I’m afraid you will have to cough up some readies, no idea on price though. The Beta and its freebieness end in February 2011.

Grab it here…

This is really an advanced version of the simple Regedit, ‘Regedit on steroids’ as some might say.

RegAlyzer has the same look and feel as Regedit does but there are some notable differences under the hood. On tap there is Security information, info database and Change logs which has an undo option to roll back the changes.

It has the ability to display custom reg files for the adventurous among you and has an incredibly useful ‘jump to key’ function.

The history function is super, providing a list of what changes you have made and then allowing you to undo those changes should you so desire.

Other notable features include the ability to load other registry hives from a different system and edit it to your heart’s content. It works the same way as mounting a drive or an ISO image and you can keep it until you reboot or export it.

If you are unfortunate enough to get a Trojan that blocks regedit from running then there is a fair chance that RegAlyzer will still work and enable you to search for the Trojan registry entries and then delete them, highly useful if you’re without your usual diagnostic tools.

Almost a standard feature nowadays for registry programs, it includes a useful bookmark function that comes with some stored favourites inside already like MSConfig and Internet Explorer, clicking on these takes you straight to these entries in the registry and of course you can manage the bookmarks to create your own.

A very useful ability is that you are able to carry on working while the search is conducting its enquires which can take a while compared to other programs I’ve tested but it’s not painfully slow and it is a lot more useful than most with numerous options available to you.

Dword editing in parallel with hex and binary, useful touches like this make RegAlyzer a versatile tool.

A list of features taken directly from their website.

• New: Undo and Redo logs in .reg format
• Improved search function (results list)
• Hierarchical bookmark support
• Jump to key by command line parameter
• Jump to key by typing/copying it into dialog (instead of browsing)
• DWord editing with parallel hex/decimal/binary display
• Support of QWord (64 bit integer)
• Display of .reg file contents without importing it
• Support of version 5 files (Unicode) even with Windows 95/NT
• Low-level display of security settings with option to export it

Some negatives are that it hasn’t been updated since 2008 and there are reports of the search function hogging all the resources to the point of creating a freeze on the machine but after testing several times I was fine with the CPU maxing out at 50%. The searches were all under 30 seconds to perform and the issue may only be limited to Win XP. There is no cuddly ‘Clean Registry’ option or a ‘Backup’ facility unless you do it manually which immediately puts this away from the hands of the novices but for others it is a very useful editor with neat touches and super-handy functions. And guess what, it’s free.

Grab it here…

I have just found this little gem called RegSeeker, it’s a tiny program at 439kb zipped and it doesn’t need to be installed on your system, so you can run it from a pen drive for example.

What I believed I was downloading was basically a registry editor but it actually turned out to be fully functioning registry toolbox. As you can see from the menu it comes with a search facility, a list of installed applications, start-up entries, even built in tweaks and a registry cleaner. The Histories is a nice little touch and this option will clean your browsing history and even scrub the Index.dat file.

A useful feature is the ‘Find in Registry’ option, let’s say you have a program that won’t install because it detects an earlier version that hasn’t been removed properly even though you uninstalled it from Add and Remove in Control Panel. Using the ‘Find in Registry’ you just simply type the name of the program and click search and RegSeeker will find all references to that program which you can then safely remove.

At the bottom of the screen on the left you can see a tick box ‘Back up before deletion’ so as long as that is ticked you can always undo any alterations you have done.

The program is fast and very useful, it’s one of those little indispensible apps that you will use on a regular basis and best of all RegSeeker is free for personal use.

Grab it here…

A prime example for newbies with scripts and the registry is here;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ee176991.aspx

Remote Registry

This is more for those that manage corporate networks; you can easily access the registry on all of your workstations by going into regedit and then choosing ‘Connect Network Registry’. You are then given a browse box to connect to the remote computer’s registry. There are some prerequisites; you need to check that the remote registry service has started on the remote machines, again this can be done remotely by right-clicking on Computer/My ComputeràManageàright click on Computer Management and browse to the machine you want to connect to, you should then see the services listed. It’s useful if you have a problem with installing software or even drivers.

I had a case where we had some old machines in our network and the decision was made to go with Win 7 across the entire site. Whilst Win 7 installed fine the onboard graphic chip was not compatible and there were no drivers as the company stop support for that chip years ago. After several days I managed to create a hybrid of a driver for the chip that Win 7 would accept but it needed several registry entries and modifications so I chose one machine as a test and used remote registry.

Once it finally worked it was a simple case of putting the new driver in a logon script so that it installed to all the old machines in the network. Moral of the story is if you are going to roll out a new operating system then put it on new machines.

Certain Software Problem

I will not name the product but here is quite an extensive forum on a registry product that has had many complaints for some years and it’s still going, judge for yourself.

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6138_102-169176.html

Registry Editing

There are a number of tools out there that can edit the registry and provide far more functionality and operate quicker than your bog standard regedit.

One such tool is Vilma Software Registry Explorer, you can create and delete keys or values without fear as the program will track changes in the background and allow you to undo any changes you have made.

This software is free and can be found here;

http://www.vsft.com/regexp/using.htm

Another registry editor is O&O RegEditor. Again it has features above your standard regedit.

It can run form a USB Pen drive, create and manage favorites which can be imported or exported, an easier and faster search function and you can import of export XML files.

Warning, it does nag you every so often that it is part of a suite of tools from O&O software

More information here; http://www.oo-software.com/corp/en/products/ooregeditor/

And once more it’s free.

In fact there are a multitude of these micro registry tools so a more in-depth review will be needed as some are indispensible for admins and personal users.

We are going to have a look at their revamped Registry Mechanic software which has been going steady for several years now and consistently receives good reviews.

PC Tools Registry Mechanic runs on XP 32bit only, Vista and Win 7 both 32 & 64 bit versions. With this version there is a comprehensive feature set and builds on the previous versions with some new extras. Highlights include Internet Privacy, Secure data erasing, history cleaning of a variety of applications such as MSN Messenger and a scheduler which should have been included some time ago.

The install did not go as planned, there was a problem with the MSCOMCT2.OCX file located in Windowssystem32, a quick investigation showed that this file was being used by IDrive which is the online backup program I use. Exit IDrive and the install continued without a hitch.

Once you install Registry Mechanic it immediately downloads any updates that are available and then proceeds to do a full scan. This is what it found on my system.

Apparently 929 registry errors on my system, I’m naturally sceptical so I proceeded to investigate further, on the left hand side you can see a menu of exactly where the errors are located and you can see that most of them (690) are located in ‘Deep Scan’, browsing through the list I could see numerous programs that I use to have but have since been uninstalled and this scan has obviously picked up entries and shortcuts that are still in the registry. This is a good start and assures me that it is genuinely picking up dead bits of wood so to speak and not just displaying fluff that are not real errors.

Menu Screen

Below is the menu screen when you start Registry Mechanic, I have LOW system health largely because I haven’t run any of the services or utilities yet. I suspect once I run these helpful services I bet my System Health will be HIGH. On the left hand side under the large dial are the sub headings, Optimize, Maintain, Options and Help Center.

The Menu screen is beautifully laid out and crystal clear, no quibbles there, everything is easily accessible. We’ll look at what tools each sub heading contains and how they help the system.

Optimize

Clean Your Registry is obviously as it sounds and is the main function of the whole suite. So what does it do? By choosing Clean Your Registry the program will perform a scan of your registry for old leftover files, corrupt hardware entries and irrelevant shortcuts for example, upon finding these files it will then present the number of errors to you. No changes are made until you click Repair.

Tuneup Your Services is just simply a shortcut to services.msc, it gives you two options, one is recommended and the other is minimal. By clicking on Recommended a number of services will be left running and a few will be switched off if you should choose Minimal then quite a large number of services will be turned off and only those deemed essential are left on. In both cases you can see which individual services would be switched on or off before you click Apply.

The idea behind this is to reduce the number of services running therefore obtaining a quicker and more responsive system.

Clean Your Disks, now this is quite comprehensive and covers a lot of bases.

• Windows section clears out all your recently used files and history and any temp files.
• Browsers; empties the cache, the history, and recently typed URL’s in the address bar. It will also empty the index.dat and any autocomplete forms but if do not wish to have any of these items cleaned then just untick the boxes before you click on Clean.
• Plugins is a neat feature where all third party apps are listed and when highlighted it will tell you what will be cleaned for that app. It will usually be recent file usage or the logs that get cleaned.
• Custom Items, this is where you can create your own list by browsing areas on your system to target for the cleaning.
• Free Space. This has me intrigued, it ‘bleaches’ the free space on the drives you select and completely eradicates the history of deleted files, it will also scramble the Master File Table records to complete its bleaching. Unless I had some kind of nefarious activity going on it’s not something I would really worry about. It also concerns me that the master file table is messed about with but the help file and the FAQ doesn’t say to what extent this goes to. Too many repairs I have done because of stuffed MFT’s.

Defragment Your Registry is a straightforward registry defrag program, as soon as you click on it the whole screen is locked while it does its analysis. After a few minutes it will give you a percentage of how much the registry will be compacted by, you can then go ahead and perform the defrag.

Optimize Your System this shows you all the running processes on your system, on the next tab is Performance and this is where you can choose to ‘Optimize Your System’. By clicking on this a number of things happen in the background, DLL files are purged from memory, Menu Show Delay is reduced and the windows boot file is defragged to increase boot speed. To be honest I didn’t notice any difference but neglected systems almost certainly will.

Shred Your Files is a manual file shredder; you can drag/drop files into the list or browse to them via the Add button, you can also shred folders or choose to do the recycle bin. There are four methods of shredding two of which use the US Department of Defence methods at various strengths.

Maintain

There are three settings here, System Monitor, Manage Your Services and Restore.

System Monitor; whatever changes you make it will be monitored to see how it affects the systems performance namely the Start Up and Shut Down speeds.

Manage Your Services this covers third party application services and you can stop or start them here, of course you can see them by typing services.msc in the run box.

Restore, just as you would expect, any backups of the registry are listed here and you can choose to restore to an earlier snapshot.

Options

The settings for the whole program are here plus some extras, you can select where to scan and what to scan, have an ignore list, enable Privacy Guardian and create schedules.

Privacy Guardian this is simply in-private browsing like the option you get in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari, it just deletes any traces of your Internet activity, nothing gets stored on your system about your Internet activity. I’m not sure if this is the same Privacy Guardian that is available separately for £9.95, if it is then it’s a nice bundled extra.

Scheduler, finally the ability to run scans at logon, daily or weekly intervals and at whatever time you specify. You have the choice of performing a registry scan or a privacy scan or, if you wish, you can schedule to run both.

Help Center

The last setting is the Help Center and is rather oddly named, what it really entails is a collection of shortcuts to Windows services and applications. Shortcuts include Control Panel, Device Manager, Disk Management, Windows Update and several others, it is a handy to have everything in one place but it just seems to be a bolted on extra rather than serving any purpose.

I have the earlier version is it worth the upgrade?

A common question with all software, personally I would say no in this instance, unless you have a really old version. The new features are nice but are not compelling enough for me to say upgrade now.

PC Tools Registry Mechanic Conclusion

PC Tools Registry Mechanic is a quality piece of software that performs a thorough job of cleaning and keeping the registry error free. The software is clear and bright making it easy to use and to navigate the numerous settings. In use the program performed very quickly and was very clear with the results, all in all it was a joy to use with a novice user having no need to worry about using the program and getting bogged down with technical details.

Help is at hand from various sources, there is an active forum, FAQ and a knowledge base as well as live chat on the website should you need it and not forgetting email and telephone support as well.

I do feel the program dresses itself up a bit with some of the features, ‘Tune up your Services’ for example can be manually done just by typing services.msc in the run box and nearly all tasks in ‘Clean your Disks’ can be done through ‘Disk Clean Up’ by right clicking on your C drive, properties and choose disk clean up.

I may be being a bit picky as a large number of users won’t even know what a ‘service’ is and this program takes care of that for them, if you know what you are doing then these features do feel a bit needless.

The other features like the File Shredding, Privacy Guardian and Free Space are I feel just bolted on to create a better value for money product, again for some it will and for others it won’t.

If you have the earlier version then stick with it, there’s no need to upgrade to this version unless you have a specific need for one of the new features.

Overall Registry Mechanic 2011 does offer great value for money at £29.99 and this covers three pc’s for the year, it competes with the best and is a great additional tool for keeping your pc in a healthy condition, combine this with the comprehensive help if you need it then I can thoroughly recommend it.

PC Tools have been very busy lately with a revamp of all their software products, all now sport the 2011 branding after the title, this includes their famed Registry Mechanic software which has been well received over the years.

Registry Mechanic has been around for seven years now and has fully matured into a complete registry do-it-all program, this latest release is a major upgrade and as you would expect there are several new features that have been included in the new version.

Below is a feature list of what’s inside Registry Mechanic 2011 directly taken from their website.

• Advanced performance and system monitoring technology delivers effective results.
• Cleans the Windows® registry to speed up your PC.
• Optimizes Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP performance.
• NEW! Protects Internet privacy and personal information.
• NEW! Securely deletes files from your PC.
• NEW! Bleaches free space and deleted files using Department of Defense standard (DoD 5220.22-M) making the data unrecoverable using regular file recovery methods.
• NEW! Plug-ins clean the history of 100+ third-party programs, including chat, image viewers, P2P applications and more.
• NEW! Scheduler allows you to set and forget, optimizing your system for optimal performance and protecting your privacy online.

Most of the above list is already available on other registry cleaners so it looks like a game of catch up but I’m very interested in the bleaching process and the history cleaning. As this is quite a major release I think the new version warrants a review which will be coming up very shortly.

Meanwhile you can check it out here…