With registry repair software, there's both free and full-priced tools to consider. Having tested a good number of the leading paid registry cleaners, I wanted to test the freebie offerings out there too. So I spent some time downloading and trying out the major free reg cleaners.

CCleaner The registry cleaner here is part of a larger tool aimed at de-cluttering your PC. The software isn't very user-friendly (in case you can't find it, the registry cleaner is under 'Issues'). And the registry cleaner is very basic. Didn't find many errors, or give explanations as to which ones it did find. Annoyingly, CCleaner also installed a browser in my web browser that I had to uninstall by hand.

Verdict: CCleaner has some good system tools and is worth downloading. But the registry cleaner is very thin & feels 'lite'. And it installs an extra toolbar if you're not careful.

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Eusing Free Registry Cleaner This is a lot better than CCleaner because it's a dedicated registry scanning tool. It also has some basic registry backup capabilities. There's no details on the errors it finds though or any advanced features. Although this is a free tool, you'll still get an annoying nag panel that asks you for a donation each time you start it up.

Verdict: For a free tool, it finds a decent number of errors. It lacks a lot of the extra features of real cleaners though. And the nag screen gets on your nerves.

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RegSeeker RegSeeker is a bit like a scaled down version of XP Repair Pro. I found it a bit too complicated. To get the most out of it you'll probably need to dip into the help files. But on the whole it's not too shabby. On test it doesn't find as many problems as the better paid for tools though.

Verdict: A nice freebie but doesn't compete with it's bigger brothers when it comes to feature set or the errors it can detect.

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Abexo Free Registry Cleaner This wasn't at all difficult to use, seemed to take up very little system resources and did genuinely find and fix some errors in the registry. It also performs registry backups quickly and easily. Where it fell flat was that it missed a lot of simple errors it should have cleaned.

Verdict: As a free tool - good. As a serious registry fixer, look elsewhere. Found about a third of the errors some of the top paid ones find.

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Free Windows Registry Cleaner After a sightly tricky installation it was up and running. It's highly over-simplistic in it's features and finds a very small number of errors. I guess you could say that it was fast - but that's only because of the previously mentioned problem. This isn't one to keep.

Verdict: Doesn't compete with the worst performing registry cleaners I've tested. And definitely the worst of the free ones.

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There are a good number of free registry cleaners available on the Internet. And they aren't terrible programs by any means. But having tested and played around with the 'real' ones over the past months, I've come to expect more than you can get from these free titles.

RegSeeker seems to do the best job of the freebie tools I tested, but it was desperately lacking in the feature set you get with the better pay-for products. When you think you can get a really good registry cleaner for $20.00 (Like RegCure), that blows any of the above away, I'd definitely say invest in a good one. It'll really pay off over the years in terms of keeping your system running quickly and smoothly.

	The best software I've found
	Comparison of the major programs
	Reviews of Registry Cleaning software