Registry Clean and Repair

Our partner site and their flagship registry clean software, Reg Easy, will fix the following errors:

Windows installer, ActiveX, ActiveX control, Windows startup, Explorer, Media player, lsass.exe, svchost, registry, DLL, runtime, iexplore, crashes, slow PC, freezing, blue screen (BSOD), Dr. Watson, driver, corrupt registry files and MORE…

Some of the key features and benefits of this windows reg cleaner:

File recovery, password recovery, optimize internet, winsock2 repair, junk files, duplicate files, evidence cleaner, backup and restore registry (multiple restore points), block/register activex, memory tweak and MORE…

See for yourself how many errors you have with our free scan below, courtesy of Reg Easy:

Also may be helpful some info on optimizing Windows and fixing registry errors.

Here are a few tips to get more performance and life out of your Windows XP computer.

Run Regular Scans

To keep your XP performance high, you should run on a regular basis (at least once per week) the following: virus scanner, spyware scanner and registry scanner.

For the virus scan, you can get a free one called AVG. For anti-spyware, the best out there is called Spybot. Finally, for registry scanning and cleaning we recommend Reg Easy – you can get a free scan right now here:

Defragment

Yes, this is age old advice and a well known XP performance tweak but it is true. Make sure that your hard drive is defragmented. You need only run this program once per month.

Some people like to defragment daily but in my opinion, this is risky. If you get a power interruption during a defragmentation then it can totally corrupt your installation of Windows. So if you run a scan (needlessly) daily then you run a much higher risk of this and you gain nothing from it.

Disable Startup Programs

Is your PC especially slow to load up? Do you notice all kinds of programs loading up at startup? One way to speed up your PC is to get rid of many of these useless programs.

You can disable them by going to Start, Run, msconfig. Now go to the “Startup” tab and you can select and deselect programs as you wish. This will give you a superior and faster pc startup. It’s amazing how many pesky programs that you barely ever use like to reside in your memory anyway.

Registry Hacks To Speed Up XP

There are also a few reg hacks you can try here. I must warn you that if you are not comfortable editing the registry then don’t attempt to try these hacks. Instead, use a free registry scan like this one.

Speed Up Shutdown

This is a tiny tweak but could be really useful for you. Often, when your Windows XP PC becomes really slow over time, it also takes forever to shut down. This can be annoying if you need to leave the house right away but are waiting 5 minutes to make sure your PC is switched off.

Instead you can do this.

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del. Click the Shut Down menu and then hover your mouse over “Turn Off”. Before you click it, make sure that you are first holding down the Ctrl button.

When you do it this way you will experience a much quicker shutdown that is still absolutely safe to do.

The need to optimize Windows performance is ever existant. Unfortunately, although Windows runs fairly well “out of the box”, very quickly it will begin to slow down. This is entirely related to how much you use the machine. Some heavy users report their PCs running to a crawl within just 6 months (I can confirm this myself!).

So What Can You Do?

Well, there are a few options open to us in this situation. Let’s take a closer look.

Hard Disk Space

One thing you must do is ensure that Windows has enough hard disk space to properly manage your system. If you have less than one gigabyte of free space then your computer must already be running incredibly slowly. It would surprise me if this were not the case.

You should have at least 5GB of free space on your system and ideally 10GB.

Pagefile

Windows makes use of a reserved area of hard disk space called the “pagefile”. This is a kind of working space for Windows to use as it needs to. When you switch back and forth between programs, Windows does the behind the scenes work here.

By default, this is set to 1.5x the size of your memory. In fact, you’ll get much better performance if you increase it to around 3x your memory.

If you know enough about computers then you can even put this on another partition for greater performance.

Get Rid Of The Fancy Stuff

Those new graphics in XP and especially Vista may wow you at first but you will soon tire of them. They are a huge drag on Windows performance and you will really see this as you use your computer more and more and it ages over time. I highly recommend switching all of this cosmetic stuff off – quite often it actually makes you work less efficiently anyway.

Old Registry

The registry is a central database designed so that applications did not need to waste time and space by having their own records – instead, the registry stores the key configuration data and makes it available for all apps to use.

Sounds great in theory but the reality is that this much written to area of Windows deteriorates very, very quickly.

There are a number of ways to fix this problem but the best by far is to use a registry scanner. Want to know how many registry errors you have right at this very moment? Then you can get a free scan here.

Lose The Desktop Icons

I know it sounds crazy but it is true. One of the easiest ways to optimize Windows performance, not by a huge amount but a little, is to get rid of the icons on your desktop.

Of course, some cannot be moved as they are placed there by the system. But the rest can easily be moved. Here’s a handy tip: create a folder on the desktop called “Desktop Icons” or something similar and then move all the icons here.

Overall, this will mean less of a load for Windows to handle in terms of redrawing the graphics on your screen, and lead to improved Windows performance for you.

Also known as the “blue screen of death” (and rightly so), blue screen error messages are well known annoyances to Windows users (both XP and Vista).

Even Bill Gates himself is not immune to experiencing this annoying problem. At one keynote speech, he tried to showcase the plug and play abilities of Windows and as soon as he plugged in a scanner, he got the infamous BSOD. There were laughs all around!

How To Fix The BSOD

So you have the blue screen error messages yourself and I’m guessing that you’re at the stage where they are now becoming more frequent and therefore annoying. So what can you do about it?

The reason you have this BSOD in the first place is because your computer has reached a very unstable state over a period of time. Although it is not impossible for a brand new PC to have these problems, they are far more likely as time goes on. This is because areas of your system (especially the registry) become inefficient and corrupted over time.

Rule Out Others

Before we go ahead and fix the BSOD, just make sure that you are not receiving these messages due to some other reason e.g. you just changed a piece of hardware recently and these messages are only occurring since then.

If nothing major changed with your PC recently when these blue screen error messages started to appear and/or become more frequent, then you almost certainly have a registry/system problem. The good news is that this can easily be fixed.

Registry Cleaner

Sure, if you know enough about computers then you could dive into the registry and system files and try to get rid of these blue screen errors yourself. So vast is the modern day registry that you would be at it for years until you found a solution!

Hence why even PC experts like myself (I’ve supported thousands of users in the corporate environment) use a good registry cleaner – they work efficiently, compact and fix your registry, and are also really easy to use no matter what your level of experience with computers. For example, you can just hit a single button to scan and fix your problems OR you can drill down to customize if that level of control appeals to you.

Your BSOD problems are only going to get worse and worse with time if you don’t do something about it soon. I strongly advise you to run the free scan below to find out just how many errors your PC has right now:

ActiveX is a core component of Windows that was supposed to make life easier for programmers to make new software more quickly and more easily. But ActiveX errors are also the bane of many regular people like you and I who just want to use our computers normally but don’t want to be bombarded with error messages.

Most of the time, there is actually not a problem with your registry. If there is, we’ll deal with that in a moment, but first you should try the following fixes.

Remember, when it comes to diagnosing and curing PC problems, try the simplest and quickest solutions first.

Browser

First check your browser. In IE, go to Tools then Internet Options then Security then Custom Level. Here, make sure that ActiveX is allowed.

System Configuration

There is a system file called msxml3.dll which is a core part of the Windows operating system. Such “DLL” files are normally registered on startup and remain that way but sometimes you must do it manually.

Go to Start, Run and then type in:

regsvr32 msxml3.dll

This will re-register the DLL file. Now see if the problem has disappeared.

Still Getting ActiveX Errors?

If you are still getting errors then you likely have a much bigger problem in your registry. The registry is the central database for the operating system. You may be missing a reference to an important DLL or your registry may be corrupted in some other way.

At this stage, you must urgently run a registry scan to first find and then fix the errors. The only alternative way around this is a full Windows XP reinstall. If you are in a corporate environment then your local Tech Support may be able to do this for you – be warned though, it will still be an inconvenience for you and although you will have all your files, things may not be “exactly as you like them” as they are now.

You can run a free scan right now to trap and identify these errors. Just click the “free scan” button below to start your registry scan right now.

It’s a fact of life that over the months and years of owning a PC from new, that the registry will inevitably become bloated and corrupt. If you don’t want to spend 2 days rebuilding your PC then what you need is a registry repair utility.

These will automatically scan your registry (the better ones will also back up your registry first, just in case) for errors, empty keys, redundant information, corruption and more.

You could not do all this work manually yourself. The Windows XP registry contains tens of thousands of entries, you would simply not have the time to sift through this huge amount of data.

The Process

Here’s how the software typically works. First you run a scan – this will take a few minutes and identify how many errors there are. The best software will even tell you the types of errors encountered so you can ignore some if you wish. Finally, you will be asked if you want to fix these problems.

After this, your PC will operate much faster and have far less errors.

Typical Results

I’m not going to lie to you. Your PC won’t be like brand new. That is impossible.

The only way to get your PC as close as possible to when you first bought it is to back up all your data, reinstall Windows XP, reinstall your programs and restore your backups. This took me two entire days the last time I did it. Basically I only perform this operation about once every four years or so. Otherwise, I rely on a good registry repair utility.

Free Scan

I personally use “Registry Easy”. It’s a very easy to use an intuitive piece of software. You can do a free scan yourself right now, just to see how effective it is at trapping and fixing registry errors. Just click the button below:

If you want to have a go at editing your registry to speed up XP then here are a few useful edits you can make. I must warn you beforehand that if you have no experience with editing the registry then you should probably not try these out. If your system gets into an unstable state then I cannot help you!

If you are worried about this then you should just use a registry cleaning and optimization program. Scroll down for details on Registry Easy, my favorite software for this task.

First, find this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Then set DWORD value of the key to “1″. This will force the core of XP (the kernel) to run in RAM rather than from the hard disk. Basically, it will be faster!

Quicker Way To Speed Up XP

It’s far easier to just use a registry cleaning program instead. These will get rid of errors, stop freezing, fix corrupt registry files, remove unnecessary duplicate info and more.

If you scan your PC now for free, I guarantee you are going to find a ton of errors that you did not know about, and after removing them your PC will be much, much faster. Just check it out below for yourself:

About Registry Easy™
Current Version: 5.6
File Size: 3.79 MB
Operating System: Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Protection Against: Cleans registry and optimizes PC for better performance.

*Windows© XP, Vista and the Windows XP/Vista Start button are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

A registry cleaner is an essential tool in the armory of even the most computer-phobic person. It acts as both prevention and cure and can help with the following:

• Speeding up your PC
• Fixing your registry
• Removing errors
• Killing spyware
• and more…

Which Is The Best? – Trial Version

But how do you know which is the best of all the registry cleaners? How can you test one to see if it is good enough?

The answer is to use a trial version. This will allow you to run a scan right now on your PC.

Our #1 Recommended Choice

Here at Registry Clean & Repair, we recommend WorkStationOptimizer. We believe it is the best registry cleaner by far. But don’t just take our word for it, check out the trial version now.

Click here to go immediately to the Trial Version Download Page.

OR

Click here to go to the Flash Demo Page.

Did you know that you can easily change the “My Computer” label on your desktop by editing the registry?

Find this key in the registry:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

By the way, if you have trouble finding this key, you may just want to do a search instead for “20D04FE0″ or something similar.

You’ll find something there called LocalizedString. Just rename it to something else like LocalizedString.old.

Then create a new one.

OR

Just edit the string directly but be careful!

Replace the text there with:

%USERNAME% on %COMPUTERNAME%

That’s it! Just reboot and see your work!

I recommend backing up either the single registry key or even the entire registry before making these or any other registry changes. The registry is easy to accidentally corrupt yourself if you’re not careful. Of course, the best registry cleaner software will usually have backup facilities built in saving you a lot of trouble.

Svchost errors are some of the most common types of Windows registry errors and also some of the most difficult to remove manually.

What Is Svchost?

Every program on your PC is run as a different process. e.g. Microsoft Word is “winword.exe”. But there are also a ton of other small programs that need to be run so Windows calls them all “svchost.exe“.

Types Of Svchost Errors

All kinds of things can go wrong and give these errors.

One of the biggest culprits is a corrupted registry or a bad registry key. The information is wrong and the svchost process cannot run properly.

Sometimes this is so bad that the process tries to take over 99% of the available PC memory and starts to slow everything down!!

How To Fix Svchost.exe Error

The first thing that you should try is a complete Windows Update. This solves the problem for many users.

There are also some DLL files that you can re-register but you might as well just try a full reboot (restart) instead.

If you still have this error then there are other steps you can take. Either you can try to manually delete the corrupt files and re-register the DLLs. If you have no idea what I mean then I strongly advise not trying or else you may easily and accidentally damage your computer.

Instead, try the free registry scan below to see how many confirmed errors you already have on your PC: