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Reviews For Auslogics Registry Defrag version 4.1.11.105
Average Rating: 4 Based On 1 Reviews


Date: July 02, 2008, 4:12:56pm


user: gepley
computer: AMD Turion 64 Mobile, 1.58GHZ, 1 GB RAM
operating system: Windows XP Pro, SP3
screen reader: JAWS 9
rating: 4
comments: What's a registry, and why would you want to defrag, or defragment, it?

On the Windows operating system, the registry is a sort of database where Windows and other programs store lots of different information... primarily settings for various different software programs or Windows itself.

Like any database, the registry can become cluttered over time, so a registry defrag tries to do two things. One, it attempts to remove unnecessary clutter, and two, it compacts the resulting registry database so all the entries that do need to be there aren't separated by all the clutter. Both of these items result in a smaller registry file, and thus, faster access to the information in that file.

Auslogics Registry Defrag, like the company's Disk Defrag program, is free software, and like it's cousin, is a very simple and straightforward program to use.

When you run Auslogics Registry Defrag, you'll begin on a screen telling you what the program does, with focus on the Next button, which, like other buttons in the user interface, offers the familiar Alt+N shortcut key.

What you won't be told is anything about a registry backup, which is rather unusual for a registry tool like this, as most registry utility software offers some obvious means of backing up and restoring the registry, just in case something doesn't seem quite right after using the program.

After I ran the program through its paces, some poking around did reveal that the program created a system restore point, titled with the time and "AusLogics RegDefrag before defragmentation". While this is better than nothing at all, I'm not a fan of restore points. Waiting too long to use one can sometimes do more harm than good to your system, and if you wait too long to use a particular restore point, it may be gone, because Windows doesn't retain every single restore point forever.

Using a restore point for the registry backup just isn't a good idea, in my book, so my advice is to Google or Yahoo to learn how to backup and restore the Windows registry, and use that method, rather than relying on this program to do the job with a restore point.

When you press the Next button on the first screen of the program, Auslogics Registry Defrag will first warn you to shut down all other programs, offering you an OK button to continue with the analysis. I tend to just shut down any open windows or documents. I don't tend to shut down every program that might be running in my system tray. For one thing, I'm not going to shut down my anti-virus program, even if I disconnect from the internet, just to run a program like this, because one never knows where a virus may lurk. So just shutting down all the programs, such as any open documents, windows or other programs on the task bar, should be enough for most users.

If you use a software speech synthesizer for JAWS, other than Eloquence, you might also want to use the Ctrl+JAWSKey+S to select and change to the Eloquence synthesizer, before continuing. This is just wise with some software, due to what the software must do. Some software speech synthesizers otherwise tend to stutter or break up a lot if other software's doing some intensive operation, as the registry defrag's about to do.

You can't realistically expect utility software, such as DVD or CD burning or ripping, anti-virus or spyware scanning, disk or registry defragmentation, to NOT use a lot of system resources. These programs aren't designed to be used while you're trying to use your computer for other things. In fact, doing so's not a good idea. You should always run programs of this type by getting them started on their task, then leaving your computer alone, only checking status on occasion. Don't check email, do instant messaging, browse the internet, or work on a document or spreadsheet while using most utility program functions like those mentioned above, or you're just asking for trouble.

Once you press the OK button on the warning dialog, the program analyzes your registry in order to determine what kind of shape it's in... how cluttered is it, and what kind of performance increase might be expected after defragmentation. The time it takes to run this analysis will vary, depending on your computer's overall specifications and on the size and clutter in the registry. It took about one minute fifty two seconds... under two minutes... to analyze my 63,488 Kb registry, determining that the registry could be reduced 17% to 52,684 Kb, with a performance improvement of 19%. I'm not sure exactly how Auslogics is determining the performance increase, but more on that in a moment. Once the analysis is complete, as with the Disk Defrag program, you'll need to use whatever method you prefer to read over the analysis results. You could use the JAWS cursor or virtualize the results window, but, regardless, this information isn't placed in a text box where you can just tab to it and read over it, which is one of the reasons I give this program a less than perfect accessibility rating. Like it's Disk Defrag cousin, the company could use more accessible display containers than they do. This is a rather minor annoyance, but, in this particular case, there was no good reason not to place the analysis results in a text box for easier reading.

There are several buttons on the analysis results screen, but the two most important are Next and Close. If you decide you'd rather not perform the defrag, you can press the Close button, and the program will ask if you're sure you want to end the program. If you select Yes, the program just closes, and nothing's done to your computer. If you select No, you'll remain on the analysis screen in the program.

If you press the Next button on the analysis screen, your computer should automatically reboot. The program schedules itself to perform the defrag at startup or boot because this is a safe point where the registry's not in use, which is best when performing such operations. Your computer should continue booting once the defrag's complete, and the program will eventually display a window telling you the process was completed. The two most important buttons in this window are a Close button, to close the program, and a button that lets you display a report of what the program did. Like it's Disk Defrag cousin, the report's presented in an HTML document in your web browser, so the report's very accessible. By the way, the defrag's only scheduled for the single boot mentioned, so you'll need to run the program and deliberately proceed through the steps to defrag each time you want to do so. The process will only occur on the boot after being told to defragment.

Okay, so, what's the verdict as far as performance improvements after running the program? Well, first, there's much debate as to exactly how much any company's registry cleaning and defragmentation software actually significantly improves your computer's overall performance. Some techies swear by the impact, while others say the improvement's so minor as to be insignificant. It's very difficult to benchmark the improvement, no matter who you are. You can take or leave the statistics, basically. My general experience with any company's registry cleaning and defragmentation software has been that it doesn't seem to significantly improve performance. A little improvement, or none at all, is what I've most often encountered.

Before running this program, from a cold boot, it took 70 seconds before JAWS announced the log on screen, and an additional 32 seconds before JAWS announced the Start button message, for a total of one minute forty two seconds. I didn't count the time it takes to enter a password. After the defrag, the cold boot time to JAWS announcing the log on screen was 64 seconds, with the additional time after log on to JAWS announcing the Start button message being 36 seconds, for a total of one minute forty seconds. These are rough figures, to be sure, because system boot times do vary some from time to time, due to the manner in which Windows loads and runs different parts of the operating system or other programs in its multitasking environment. Basically, we're probably looking at an overall three to four second faster cold boot time after defrag, which I wouldn't consider significant. Significant to me would be more like ten or twenty seconds, preferably more like twenty.

There were similar minor improvements in launching Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and opening an approximately 45 page document in Microsoft Word, but we're talking something in the range of two to five seconds improvement. I never could quite figure out where and how Auslogics was calculating the performance improvement of 19%, so I can't comment as to how accurate this figure is.

The program did appear to defrag the registry as noted on the analysis screen, and there were no problems either running the program nor any odd problems noted immediately afterwards. Registry defragmentation isn't something one would normally need to do as often as other system maintenance, so Auslogics Registry Defrag isn't a program you'll be using very often. It's worth a try to install and run this program, but you'll probably only use it once or twice a year on the same computer. Accessibility's very good, though it could be perfect with the simple addition of a text box for the registry analysis results. On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being best, I'd give this program a 2 or a 3 for not handling registry backups and restores from within the program itself, rather than a restore point. I was also unable to determine exactly what registry sub-items this program "cleaned", in the way other registry cleaners provide this information. A main registry key or item was listed in the results report, along with the before and after sizes, but all the specific sub-items leading to the reduction in size weren't listed. Otherwise, the program appears to do the intended job without harming your system, possibly improving performance to some degree.

UPDATE: I did begin to have problems with pages at some web sites loading without suddenly causing Internet Explorer to crash... pages that hadn't been causing me any problems before I used this program to defrag the registry. I noted the same problems on some other systems, significantly different enough from the ones I most often use, or used for this review, for this problem to be of significance to me.

I used the system restore point mentioned earlier in this review, and once this process was complete, everything seemed okay. The web pages that had been causing Internet Explorer to crash worked fine. One would immediately think that some spyware simply got in the registry, and ordinarily I'd believe that, but reverting back to the point before this program defragmented the registry seemed to fix the same problem on those machines. Perhaps each machine somehow became infected with the same spyware, but that's a little far-fetched on several machines used by different persons, and I tend to err on the side of caution in cases like this.

But this isn't the really fun part of the whole restore process. Very shortly after I'd checked out the several web pages that had been causing me problems, the program ran the defrag again, automatically, without asking me, and when I attempted to check the same web pages again, Internet Explorer was crashing again.

So... what happened? Why did the program run again, automatically, after I'd used the restore point to try to revert back to the way the registry had been "before" the registry defrag? After doing some poking around, it seems the idiots who wrote this particular program placed the commands in the registry to automatically run the registry defrag at boot, as well as to have the program begin the registry defrag process... BEFORE they created the system restore point. The system restore point should have been created BEFORE the program made any changes to the registry concerning running the registry defrag itself, an error the developers would've found if they'd thoroughly tested this program before releasing it.

The safer approach to restore, then, is to look for the next earliest system restore point prior to the one this program creates, and restore to that point, or simply restore your own self-made registry backup.

While I can't confirm without any doubt that this program introduced some problem in the registry that caused my later Internet Explorer problem, the fact that the problem mentioned with the restore point exists, in addition to the very minor improvements I noticed in overall performance after the program did its job, combined with the fact that there are other system tweaks you may be able to effect which seem to present more significantly noticeable performance improvements, Auslogics Registry Defrag has yet again proven to me that Microsoft is the company that needs to include a free utility to clean and optimize the registry, since Microsoft's the one who developed the whole registry concept in the first place. Third party solutions tend to flag registry entries they shouldn't, and can end up causing you more grief than satisfaction.

My final verdict on this program, as of July 17, 2008, is to install and use this program at your own risk. If you do decide to use it, learn how to create and restore your own registry backups... don't rely on a system restore point. But if you do use the system restore point, use the next earliest one to the one this program creates.




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