software-direct.net - Registry Mechanic 6 Review

You are here: Home

Reviews and News

Registry Mechanic 6 Review

I’ve decided to give my PC a good old once over to look for ways I can improve its start up speed, give it a general performance boost and lastly speed up the shut down process. I’ve had this laptop for almost a year now and have added and removed various programs over that time.

The first thing I’m going to do is clean out the registry. Now you’re probably asking what the reason is for using a registry cleaner. As you add and remove programmes from your PC and perform day to day functions, the registry, which is an area that stores information about your computer’s configuration, becomes fragmented and cluttered. Cleaning it out every six months or so should improve the performance. There are some that feel you may delete something important in the process but that’s why I’ve decided to start with a review of PC Tools Registry Mechanic 6 as it has a full restore feature in case anything goes amiss.

Once I had downloaded and installed the software it offered to perform the scan immediately. Only after the scan is complete will it ask you to fix the errors and then enter in your product serial number.

I was amazed at how quickly the program installed on my PC and was even more surprised at how quickly it performed the scan, error fixing and optimisation of the system. It took almost no time at all which is great since I was expecting the usual sitting around and twiddling the thumbs while it did its thing.

Registry Mechanic 6 Start

A huge plus for Registry Mechanic 6 is the degree of control that you have over the error fixing. Errors are broken down into sections so you can easily sort out which you’d like to sort out. Each error is also given a score of importance for quick identification of those that need urgent attention.
Registry Mechanic 6 Sections

Here is a summary of time stats for the various Registry Mechanic 6 functions:

Install time: 10 seconds
Registry Scan Time: 1.5 minutes
Errors Found: 252
Error fixing time: 5 seconds
System Optimise time: 3 seconds

I found the Registry Mechanic interface very easy to use and quite intuitive. A quick flick through the various buttons though and I had a few questions on what each of them would do. The help section within the programme offers quick start advice on how to use the basic functions but didn’t answer all my questions. By clicking through to the more in-depth online help section I was able to review more information about what each function of Registry Mechanic does and what the benefits are for using each.

While reviewing Registry Mechanic 6 I found the following to be real selling points:

1)    The Backup and restore feature. This gave me real peace of mind in case I deleted anything vital in the process. It’s a simple one click action to restore it back to the previous state.
2)    The time it takes to perform each operation, extremely quick.
3)    The comprehensive online help section. I recommend anyone to have a quick scan of this so you know what each of the functions are there for.
4)    The System Optimiser – real improvements to system performance.
5)    The price – $29.95 or only about £15 if you live in the UK. Oh, the benefits of the Pound/Dollar exchange rate!!

So what were the actual improvements? The most noticeable thing was the increase in speed at which some of the functions occur. The menu items in the Start Menu appear much faster than before, browser windows open quicker, files appear far faster when exploring the system. I did not notice much of an improvement when shutting down the system but I may have some programs working in the background that are hampering this, I’ll need to investigate more. The restart up was noticeably quicker, and I was able to get on to work items without nearly as much delay as before.

For developers using DDLs I’ve copied this from the help section on the site as Registry Mechanic is apparently a big help on the speed front:
“Windows is forced to unload DLLs from memory
Windows Explorer caches Dynamic-Link Libraries (DLLs) in memory for a period of time after the application using them has been closed. This can be an inefficient use of memory on low memory systems, and may cause problems or delays for programmers developing with Windows DLL files.”

I also tried the Compact Registry feature but found that I only saved an additional 1.5mb out of 31.7, hardly anything to write home about but I’m sure every bit helps.

My Registry Mechanic 6 review resulted in the following scores:

Ease of Setup & Use: 8 out of 10
Performance Time: 9 out of 10
PC Improvement: 7 out of 10
Help & Support: 8 out of 10
Value for Money: 7 out of 10

Overall Score 7.8

Where to buy Registry Mechanic 6 :

Direct from PC Tools for $29.99 with a 20% discount when you enter the code "pctools20" in the checkout (please feel free to add a comment of this code no longer works and I'll try to find another one)