Registry Fix Review

Review of Registry Fix 6.3 by – MovKit Software Inc.
Rating: 4.0/5 stars     Price: $37

Registry Fix has been one of the leading registry repair tools on the web, advertising it retains more than ten million users worldwide. It is a full system registry cleaner and optimization application with both registry repair and PC optimization capabilities. Currently, Registry Fix is designed for use on Windows 98/ME, 2000, XP, and Vista.

Since we have personally used this application on two machines, we have direct experience with its operation. Registry Fix has a user-friendly interface that is easy to understand and apply. This is one of its features that was initially attractive to us after we first bought and installed the program. Its scans are relatively quick, usually within two minutes, and it fixes all the essential problems. In the two years that we have been using this registry cleaner it has never failed to deliver a good clean system. And we are not your normal Mom and Pop user; we're on the computer or internet for eight to ten hours each day, so our PC gets a real workout.

All that having been said, we were amazed to learn that Registry Fix picked up far fewer errors than several of the other high end registry repair tools reviewed on this site. Although this doesn't seem to have adversely affected the speed or capability of our PC; it still runs just as fast as when new out of the box. Just the same, though we initially wondered whether its efficiency could still have room to be tweaked, we eventually realized that this utility errors on the side of caution in not detecting and removing needed items. And we were recently pleased to learn upon running one of the other cleaner's system optimizer that its tool gave our PC a 100% OK, meaning no further optimization needed!

Registry Fix comes with four onboard Advanced Options: a Browser Helper Object Manager for IE, a Startup Program Manager, an Add/Remove Program Manager, and a Full Registry Backup Utility. It also creates a backup of every repaired scan which can be retained or removed by its Backup Controls feature. The registry backup utility is a manually operated control and not an automatic backup of the registry.

One bright side to the purchase options is the Extended Download service. For a modest cost of $4.95 the user can obtain download protection for an additional 36 months. This is much less than many of the other programs Extended Download service, which range from $9.95 to $19.95.

One thing we found somewhat inadequate about RegistryFix is the documentation for the operation of the program in general. Although it is designed to be learned intuitively, it would have been more helpful if detailed instructions were made available rather than having to figure out how everything worked by testing it. A clearer explanation of the dual backup feature for people who are not familiar with this might have been useful, as well as an explanation of how the restore registry feature works (it needs to shut down the system once completed; a heads up about this would have been nice).

While we are satisfied that we are receiving the minimum registry repair capabilities needed in order to maintain Windows registry, after seeing the results of other registry cleaners we wondered how many extra files remaining on our system might have been detected for fixing or removal by other utilities but which were never needing to be flagged by them. Still in all we have nothing much to complain about as our system runs smoothly after having used this product for more than two years and never having experienced any problems with its performance.

Aside from the few criticisms we've already mentioned, if RegistryFix wanted to compete better with some of its high end performance competition, it might concentrate on developing a more thorough education of its potential user in order to assure them of the utility's cleaning competency. Including an extra year of no cost Extended Download service might also be a smart move in order to build in the value of the initial cost.

Review updated  21 April, 2008