Boost your PC's performance

Launch a web browser and visit the Wisecleaner website. When the page loads, click Products menu and choose Wise Registry Cleaner Free. Click the Free Download button and at the next screen, click Download Now. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder.

Now locate and double-click the file just downloaded, called ‘WRCFree.exe’. Read the Security Warning dialogue box then click Run to allow the installation to proceed. Click Next, accept the licence agreement and, optionally, type in an email address to keep informed about product updates (otherwise click to remove the tick from the ‘I agree’ box) before clicking Next. The installation wizard may also invite you to install the free Ask Toolbar and offer to make various other changes to your web browser: unless you want to, click to remove the relevant ticks and click Next. At the end, we would also advise removing the tick next to ‘Download Wise Disk Cleaner now’. Click Finish.

At the first screen, choose your language and click OK. As this is the first time the application has been launched, it will offer the option of displaying its operation manual in the default web browser – just choose Yes or No. Wise Registry Cleaner will now offer to make a Restore Point using System Restore: click Yes followed by Create system restore point then follow the prompts. Once that’s complete, click OK and then click the Backup button on the button bar. Choose Create full registry backup and when that has finished, click the Scan button to start. When it has completed you will see the list of categories on the left and the entries displayed in the middle.

Given the age of our test PC, it is not surprising that Wise Registry Cleaner has found 490 items it thinks should be removed – these are summarised in the status bar at the foot of the application’s window – and 10 of these are flagged with a warning, to show that removal is not recommended. Here we have clicked on the first item in the list and Wise displays a comment in the bottom window, explaining that this entry relates to a program that no longer exists on the PC, so it can be safely removed.

Even so, it’s wise to play it cautious – so let us imagine that we don’t trust Wise’s appraisal just yet. Further down the list we can see an item that relates to Google’s Picasa, a photo organiser, which we know we removed from this PC a while ago. To check in XP, we can click Start, then Search, then select All Files and Folders, then choose the main disk drive and type ‘Picasa’ as the file name. Click Search and Windows finds files and folders called ‘Picasa’. In Vista and Windows 7, just click Start and type ‘Picasa’ into the search bar. On our PC, the results prove that although we have still got files relating to Picasa, the program itself has certainly gone – so we could confidently remove the flagged entry from the Registry.

What about those 10 items that Wise found but recommended we don’t remove? Click through the categories in the left-hand panel and you will occasionally see one of these in the main window, flagged with a yellow exclamation mark. Here we have clicked on the Software Section category and then highlighted one such entry. Wise displays an explanatory message in the bottom window in bright red, re-enforcing the point that although it might be safe to remove, it would be unwise to fiddle with it unless you are sure.

It’s possible to filter the list to focus on safe and unsafe entries. Click to open the dropdown menu next to the Filtrate heading and choose between All entries (so both safe and unsafe will be listed), Safe to fix and Not fully safe to fix. Next to this are two other controls – Checks Safe and Checks All. The former ticks those items Wise deems safe to remove while the latter ticks everything, so is to be avoided (after a second click this changes to Checks None, which removes all the ticks).

Using these various settings it’s easy to select only those items Wise thinks it safe to remove, so that’s what we have done by ticking only the safe ones and then clicking the Fix button at the top. We can then select each of the categories on the left in turn and click Fix to remove the associated items from the Registry. Getting rid of these junk files allows Windows to find what it does need in the Registry more quickly. The result? A faster, more reliable PC.

Having removed all those entries, it is likely that our test PC’s Registry is now fragmented – it’s a bit like a huge bookshelf where hundreds of books have been removed at random and now there are gaps all over the place. Click the Defrag button at the top and when the dialogue box opens, click the Analyse Registry button. When the results come back, click to put a tick next to the ‘Create system restore point’ option and then click the Defrag Registry button. When Wise asks if you want to compact the Registry now, click Yes.

You will need to restart your PC after the defragmentation but after that you are done. We would recommend you run Wise Registry Cleaner monthly to keep on top of things. If anything goes wrong and you need to go back to an earlier version, click the Restore button on the toolbar. From here it’s possible to undo Registry changes or go the whole hog and restore an earlier version of the entire thing. Click the relevant tab and follow the instructions.