There are many dangerous places in life, like towering cliff-tops, thunderingly fast rapids, or Blackpool on a Saturday night bank holiday weekend. And in the world of the PC, there's the registry, which all novice users are told is somewhere best left well alone; a scary realm of keys and complications which shouldn't be messed with. Unless you're going in with back-up such as the latest version of Registry Mechanic.

The program is a small (5MB) download and its design philosophy and interface are similarly compact. Registry Mechanic offers up three basic options for the user: perform a registry scan to detect and repair errors, compact and optimise the registry, and run a wizard that optimises your system.

A full scan is surprisingly zippy, and more thorough than the registry cleaner we were using previously, detecting over twice as many problems. Once the scan is done and any errors repaired, you can hit the optimise button which compacts and removes slack space from the registry, helping Windows to run a little more efficiently. It's difficult to quantify exactly how much impact this had, but our test PC certainly seemed a touch faster after optimisation. As a general rule, the older and more bloated your system, the more effect Registry Mechanic's tidying processes will have.

The system optimisation wizard follows up on these registry performance improvements by implementing a number of general tweaks. These include defragmenting the Windows boot file to speed boot up, optimising the Start menu and basic changes such as reducing the default delay time that Windows imposes on displaying menus.

Registry Mechanic also offers a monitor that, when turned on, sits in the taskbar and keeps a log of any changes made to the registry. This can be configured so that when a certain number of alterations have been made, the program will automatically run a scan and optimisation routine, removing the need for any sort of monthly scheduling. Registry Mechanic automatically backs up the registry when working on it, plus you can specify the creation of a system restore point at the same time as an extra safety net, if you so wish.

It's quite clear that this is a package designed so that even a novice user can get to grips with it easily, although a few more advanced options are present, such as the ability to specify your own custom scans on certain areas of the registry.

Buy Direct from The PC Tools Website

When it comes to tinkering with the registry, we haven't come across a better utility than this little fellow. It's dead easy to use, powerful and fast, and it streamlines your PC noticeably. Do bear in mind, though, that older, heavily clogged-up systems will benefit the most from this optimising. Buy Direct from The PC Tools Website