Any suggestions for a free registry cleaner?

[Phantom Warrior]

My computer has been running slow lately.  I'm trying to find a free registry cleaner that will actually clean up my registry.  All the ones I've found so far will find errors, but you have to register to actually fix them.

Any input would be appreciated.

[Waitone]

PC Tools Registry Mechanic does  commendable job on meatball stuff for Windows.  Gotta pay up for anything to be done with other software.  It made a major difference in my machine the first time I used it.

[J.J.]

RegSeeker  by Hoverdesk....http://www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm

its a great little program.. finds obsolete ones and is easy to use

[Marnoot]

+1 To RegSeeker. I've tried a few others, but then I run RegSeeker right after and it finds a bunch of stuff the others left behind. It's a lot like those vacuum cleaner commercials...

[lee n. field]

My computer has been running slow lately

Why is this a registry problem?  It's far more likely to be a running-too-much=malware problem.

[Phantom Warrior]

Why is this a registry problem?  It's far more likely to be a running-too-much=malware problem.

Because that is what I'm currently focusing on.  I wouldn't be surprised to find I've got malware too, and I need a program for that, but the focus of this thread was registry issues.  If you have suggestions for malware, those would be useful as well.

[lee n. field]

I guess the question should be "why are you focusing on the registry as the possible source of your percieved lack of speed problem?".    When your PC is running more slowly than it was, first look at what you programs you have running.  Look at the process list in the task manager.   Look at msconfig (or directly at the places in the registry that msconfig is making it easy for you to manipulate).  

Adaware, spybot, Micro$oft antispyware.  Install them all, update them all, run them over and over until they run clean.

[Lo.Com.Denom]

By freakish co-incidence, I installed and ran one today. I'm not very "computer-minded" (and if you'd asked me what a register cleaner was yesterday, I couldn't have told you), but I used Reg Cleaner 4.3

I got it from the Xmas issue "PC Gamer" magazine, on the free DVD, but I'm pretty sure that you could download it from a website. Seemed to get rid of a lot of useless crud anyway.

[Paddy]

I just used regcleaner; it found 901 invalid registry entries.  I deleted them all, and upon re-boot, the computer kept trying to install 'Pano stand alone', which I have no idea what it is.  So I restored the backup registry entries, but the computer still tried to install pano.  I did a restore system in WinXP.

?