Usually when we say defrag, most of the time we think that it is hard drive defragmenter. Yesterday I found a freeware that claims to defrag Windows registry. The registry is a database used to store settings and options for the 32/64 bit versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 95, 98, ME, NT,2000,2003,2008, XP and Vista. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC. Whenever a user makes changes to a Control Panel settings, or File Associations, System Policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry.
The question whether is it possible to defrag windows registry entries came to my mind when I learned about this program called RegDefrag which was released to public yesterday.
Quicksys RegDefrag is a new and free tool that claims to be able to defrag and optimize your registry by removing gaps, fragments and wasted space in Windows registry files.
This tool analyzed my Windows registry and reported too many fragments. It also stated that it could reduce the size from 44496KB to 40340KB which is nearly 10% reduction. It took only a few seconds to compact my Windows registry. That’s all it does. Simple and easy.
However, I wasn’t really convinced that it is possible to defrag Windows registry. The official website only mentioned that “Quicksys RegDefrag optimizes your registry by removing gaps, fragments and wasted space in Windows registry files.” The real meaning of defrag is reorganizing the contents to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. Removing gaps and wasted space in Windows registry is known as “compacting” and “optimizing”. In Windows XP, the registry files are located in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG folder. The files have no extensions and are named DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, and SYSTEM. I don’t think RegDefrag defrags the 5 files above. I guess RegDefrag’s function is the same as most of the registry optimizers.
Although RegDefrag is not something new, but it is still a very good, free, simple and easy to use registry optimizer program. My favorite free registry optimizer program is still NTREGOPT. What about yours?