A Review of Registry First Aid v3 & Registry Compactor v1
by David A (Kerr) Burke

Ever wonder what the Chief Nerd does when he has a problem? Well I resort to using the resources of CAUG, one of those resources are product reviews.

I was using my laptop, when my Windows XP Pro acted up again, this time I could tell it was the registry, (you pick up on these things after the first thousand times it happens). I emailed Paul Mayer, Vice President, of Software Development for InfiniSource/Rose City Software and ""Past President of the Association of Shareware Professionals, Shareware Industry Conference Hall of Fame Inductee 1997, Association of Shareware Professionals Hall of Fame Inductee 2000, Shareware Industry Conference Lifetime Achievement Inductee 2002"" and asked if I could review their latest product to see if it would solve my XP problems. I really did not want to re-install XP Pro and all my programs, again.

Now I listed Paul's credits, not to just suck up; (that is part of the job description for CAUG president), but to let you know the quality of the people behind Registry First Aid, it shows in the software.

Installation was easy, and uneventful, I just ran the program, I selected all the categories and hit start, of course it discovered lots of errors, I hit fix and that was it, my registry was better than new. My XP problems were gone. The best things in life are the simplest, and I have to tell you Registry First Aid is very easy, simple and a must have.

While on the http://www.rosecitysoftware.com/products.html site Registry Compactor caught my eye. If you have ever worked with databases you know that when records are deleted or changed, it leaves blank spots, and the database keeps growing till you pack it. Well the Windows registry works much the same way, and this makes Registry Compactor a perfect companion to Registry First Aid.

What happens is this, Registry First Aid finds the bad lines, outdated lines, errors, etc. and removes or fixes them, this makes for a larger Registry with blank spots. Windows does this on its own, as you delete programs, add programs or hardware the same thing occurs. When you start Windows, one of the real time consumers is loading the registry, and it does not take a lot to figure out a larger registry takes longer to load than a smaller one. Also as with databases, as the registry is edited, and gets larger, there is an exponential increase in the possibility of errors.

Registry Compactor is even simpler than Registry First Aid, it runs, it compacts, it is done. End results, your system loads faster, runs smoother, and has fewer errors. Now you see why I think these two are must have programs to keep your system up and running, and your blood pressure down. Registry First Aid is only $21.00 and Eric Salmassy told me he currently offers Registry Compactor http://www.elrise.com/registrycompactor.htm at a discount to members who buy Registry First Aid - for $12.95.

One last note, Paul at Rose City Software & Eric at Elrise Software are champions of supporting the end user. They also have been there anytime CAUG needed them, trust me customer support like this is hard to find, and at such low cost, well worth every cent. Please support these vendors while making life easier on yourself.  Contact me at caug@ccatech.com