Hello readers, I hope you had a great weekend. This post is the last of a five part series on how to do a tune-up, clean, and optimize a computer yourself. In this post I will teach you how to do a registry cleanup and defrag.

A Registry Cleanup is very simple. Most people think they would be done cleaning their computer at this point. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Your computer has a registry that controls everything your computer does to keep running properly. Your registry needs to be cleaned and defragmented on a regular basis. If your registry is not cleaned regularly, your computer will be slow in even the simplest tasks like starting up. If your registry is corrupt, cleaning and defragmenting it will fix it.

This is the place viruses and trojans are likely to attack. Once your registry gets attacked, your computer can act funny or not work at all. Your registry is the heart of your computers operating system. Without a properly functioning registry, your computer would not function the way it should. That’s how most people can tell they have a virus or trojan. Their computer will not act like it normally does.

Now that you know a little about your registry, we can get to cleaning it out. You can pay for registry cleaner program, but I only recommend getting one that a professional recommends. As a professional, I can only recommend 2 registry cleaners. One is FREE and the other is a pay program. I actually use them both.

The first is a pay program and is made by a Microsoft trusted company. The company is called Uniblue and they sell the best registry cleaner out there. It’s called Registry Booster 2009 and can be found here.

It costs $29.99 and will be the best money you ever invest in to your computer. It works with Windows 7, XP, and Vista. I would even say that this investment would be equal to buying a top-notch anti-virus program.

The Uniblue registry booster is very self explanatory. You simply hit the “start scan” button on the “registry scan” tab of the program. The program will find any registry errors your computer has. When it has completed, the scan it will ask if you want to fix errors. Now, you click “yes“. When the program finishes fixing your registry errors it will ask you if you want to restart your computer for changes to take effect. Click “yes” to restart your computer.

When your computer restarts, you should do a registry defragment. Start the uniblue program and choose the registry defrag tab. The program will defrag your registry and ask you to restart your computer when it is done. Restart your computer and now you have a fresh computer that is error free and running as fast as possible. Congratulations, if you did everything listed in this post, you have successfully optimized your computer the same way a professional would do it.

If you can’t afford to buy a registry cleaner program, you can use a free registry cleaner and defragmenter program.

As a professional, I can only recommend one free registry cleaner and defragmenter program. That program is called Tweak Now registry cleaner and can be downloaded here.

This program works with Windows 7, XP, and Vista.

Once you install and start the program, choose the “registry cleaner” tab on the left.

Now, click the “scan registry” button at the top of the screen. The program will now look for errors in your registry.

Once the program is done finding errors in your registry, click the “clean registry” button at the top. Now you are done cleaning the registry and are ready to defrag the registry.

Now, click the registry defragmenter tab on the left.

Now click the “defragment now” button on the top. Your registry will now start defragmenting.
WARNING: DON’T TOUCH YOUR MOUSE, TOUCH ANY BUTTONS ON YOUR KEYBOARD, OR SHUT OFF YOUR COMPUTER DURING THE REGISTRY DEFRAG AS YOU CAN CAUSE SERIOUS ISSUES. WAIT UNTIL IT IS DONE DEFRAGMENTING UNTIL YOU TOUCH ANYTHING.

Once the program has finished defragmenting your registry, you will be prompted to restart your computer. Click the “yes” button to restart your computer and you are done!

If you followed all the steps above, one-by-one, you have just optimized your computer the same way a computer professional would do it.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at
rc@rchubb.com