14 DAY TRIAL // If you’re trying to keep a clean registry there are plenty of valid solutions on the market. Ashampoo Registry Cleaner is one of the newest entries in this category. Its purpose is crystal clear: remove any redundant entries from Windows registry and make accessing it as quick as the system allows.
Priced at $14.99 the German application does not make it on the freebie list, but it offers an easy way to clean the most sensitive area in Windows. You can try it for at least 10 days and if you’re willing to create a free account with the developing company the trial is extended by another 30 days, bringing the entire evaluation period to 40 days.
Thanks to the new installer Ashampoo uses to wrap up its code putting the program on the system is a cinch. Unless you want their toolbar installed with the registry cleaner you have to pay attention during the installation process and opt out of this component. Otherwise the procedure is fairly simple and uneventful.
A straightforward interface that does not beat around the bush is available, showing the registry areas it can scan for issues and the right amount of options necessary to carry out the job. Once the scan is complete you are given the total amount of entries deemed as clutter.
The registry areas scoured are listed in the right hand part of the application screen and cover file formats issues, shared files, fonts, system sounds, help data, application paths, start menu entries, software related problems and history lists.
A single glance at the panel lets you know about the file the entry is linked to and the reason it has been picked up by Ashampoo Registry Cleaner’s scanner; generally this is because it refers to a missing file on the disk.
To avoid false positives the program makes available the possibility to build up a list of exceptions (right-click on the entry for access to this option). Future scans will no longer show said entries among results.
If you agree with the findings of the application you can proceed to deleting them all with one click of a button. During our initial tests the program discovered a pile of 260 invalid entries suffocating the test system’s registry; our analysis of the bunch did not find anything wrong in the list.
However, as a safety measure Ashampoo Registry Cleaner automatically creates a backup file for the items before removing them from the system. This way you can restore the registry to its previous state in case something does not work right.
The snapshots are taken automatically and can be set to be deleted automatically after a period of 7, 14 or 30 days in the configuration panel. Thus you do not run the risk of accumulating more fail safes than needed. All these files are available in the installation folder of the program, under “Backups” folder.
Customizing the program to work your way is no difficult task. There are few tabs available and these cover aspects such defining the working language, specifying the registry areas to be checked, handling the exception list and managing the backups. For the latter the options refer to how the files are scrapped: automatically after a period of time, to Recycle Bin, prompting for your decision on the action.
The “Backup” section in the interface not only makes available the data you can restore but also adds details on the amount of entries it contains, their age, number of saved keys and values. Date and time of the snapshot are also present in the screen so with all restoring the registry to a specific state is a simple task. If you want to see exactly what the backup contains, you can open the REG file in notepad and gander at the obsolete issues.
Ashampoo Registry Cleaner did a great job in our case and showed that it can handle the tidying up of such as sensitive area such as Windows Registry quite well. It is simple in options and does not take long to complete the scan either.
Compared to software in the same category this one definitely found more registry clutter on our test system. But just like any other registry cleaner out there, it also managed to miss some of the entries others picked up.
A backup is automatically created before anything is deleted from the system. You can set the program to automatically manage the way backups are deleted. In order to avoid false positives at every scan you can create a list of elements to be skipped during future searches. On the upside, you have an extensive period of time to evaluate its activity and impact on system performance before shelling out the money.
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