Free Registry Defrag

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Easy way to defragment Windows Registry
  • (2 more, see all...)

This article is also available in SpanishDesfragmentador gratuito del Registro

During the past couple of years, the market has grown heavy with a myriad of applications specially designed to optimize the performance of your computer in various ways: cleaning it of hogging temporary files, eliminating duplicate items, clearing the registry of invalid data or defragmenting the hard disk for faster read/write operations. These solutions came in various shapes and sizes, bundled up under one roof, or individual programs bent on a single task. Still, very few of them include in their arsenal the possibility to defragment the registry.

Even if most of the developers charge for this sort of tool, Quicksys makes it available free of charge or other sort of strings. It tackles one of the most sensitive areas in Windows but its level of complexity is not at all discouraging. On the contrary, you’ll find a very simple and intuitive application window with simple choices and information on the date and time of the last defragmentation, as well as the amount of space recovered.

Quicksys RegDefrag's configuration panel contains no complicated options and it is already set up for the application to serve you the best it can. The default customization of this area already enables automatic updates so you use the latest version of the program and check the automatic creation of restore points before any registry optimization task takes off. All there is left for you to do is select among the wide range of languages offered.

Besides the details presented in the main screen, Quicksys RegDefrag can also display information about the registry, such as its size and files on the disk. In this respect, RegDefrag shows the same registry file twice in some cases. However, the issue did not always occur as further checking showed all ten registry files listed as having different paths.

The actual process of defragmenting the registry requires no more and no less than three steps to complete. Restarting your machine is a must for everything to fall back in the right place. First and foremost, the application will initiate an analysis procedure over the registry to determine the level of fragmentation.

During this part, the system may become unresponsive and the screen dims all around Quicksys RegDefrag window. A few minutes later, the app will restore full desktop functionality and present the results of the assessment including the amount of the registry after optimization completes. The last step of the procedure consists in the defrag process per se and the computer restart to settle everything.

In our case, Quicksys RegDefrag successfully managed to shrink the size of the registry and eliminate free spaces significantly. The first time, it shrunk it to 77% and dropped its size from 65,024KB to 50,467KB, just like it had promised in the assessment window. On a less intensely used machine, the data was a bit different, but the application still managed to bring an improvement by diminishing the size of the registry from 58,396KB to 56,064KB (4% decrease).

If you need a detailed view on the defragmentation process, Quicksys RegDefrag can generate HTML reports of the operation. You can save them on the computer and review or compare them at any time. They include the date and time, username, duration of the defrag process, size of the registry before and after the procedure, as well as the difference between the two values. The difference is also broken down to registry file level, so that you have a complete picture of how the app affected the system.

For those worrying about the duration of the entire deal, it does not take long at all. On the cleaner computer with a smaller registry footprint, the whole process completed in one minute and two seconds (it claimed 14,656KB of space). On the second test machine, which had a larger sized registry, the total time required to complete the task was of one minute and sixteen seconds (it cleared 2,320KB).

The registry does not require to be defragmented on a daily basis, but every now and then, it is a good thing to compress it. This activity will definitely not boost the performance of the machine, but it will contribute to a better, faster running of the system. Despite the fact that it works with Windows Registry, handling it is nothing complicated and even beginners can use it without problems.

Before it starts defragmenting, it will lay down all the steps required for a successful procedure, not forgetting to mention that the direct consequence of the entire endeavor is improved access to the registry. Quicksys RegDefrag is perfectly capable of just analyzing the registry, so you can decide whether a defrag is in order or not.

The conclusion is that the three-step method proposed by Quicksys RegDefrag for defragmenting Windows Registry and thus better the efficiency of the system is anything but complicated. For those that do not wish to install the application, RegDefrag from Quicksys also comes in portable form. The desktop version of the program uninstalls with no problems, leaving no leftovers to clutter the registry.


The Good

Quicksys RegDefrag makes for a really easy way to compress the size of the registry, without having to go through complicated procedures. It does not take too long to complete the task and you are offered a full report with the changes.

The Bad

It happened for the application to list the same registry file twice when viewing Registry Information. However, during our testing, this only occurred once.

The Truth The app relies on a three-step procedure at the end of which you have to restart your computer, as simple as that. It also allows you to check the details of the entire operation by viewing the logs. Quicksys RegDefrag is free of charge and comes as a portable application as well.

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user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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