Is a Free Registry Cleaner Good Enough?

Is a Free Registry Cleaner Good Enough?- Free registry cleaner downloads seem to be everywhere. All of them will scan your system for registry errors, and some will even correct these errors for you. This is where the commonality of most free registry cleaners ends. The various add ons, upgrades, and licensing options provided by one free registry cleaner to another can be as different as night and day, and the benefits of each needs to be evaluated to see if a free registry cleaner is suitable for your system maintenance needs.

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Some free registry cleaner products will offer to scan you system for free, but will ask you to upgrade in order to have any errors that were found corrected. Other free registry cleaner offerings will not only scan AND remove errors from your system, but will allow auto restore in the case of problems, or integration into a larger suite of products offered by the company.

Be aware that anti-virus and adware scanners also follow the first method of distribution frequently , so unless it specifically mentions registry cleaning in the description, do not confuse the two and download the wrong product.

There are a few different licenses that you may find free registry cleaner products listed under. Each license will affect your ability to get the features you want without cost and should be fully evaluated.

1. Freeware - This model usually gives the basic product away for free, allowing the full use of the programs core features, usually with the availability of advanced features can be added with an upgrade or purchase.

2. Limited Shareware - This software is usually similar to the above, but often has a very unique distinction. Many shareware products do not first let you try the basic product and ask you to upgrade. Instead, they will allow you to use the fully featured program for a limited period or number of times, and then the software is rendered unusable, or with certain features "crippled". You then have to register or purchase the product in order to regain the full feature set again.

3. Open source free registry cleaners - These free software products are becoming more and more popular, not just for their free availability, but for the allowance of code modification and re-release. In this fashion several custom software packages with a specific set of features can be created from one free software package by developers and then redistributed for other people's use.

To find out if any of the software with the various different options available is good enough for you comes back to the question; What are you looking for? You have several choices and packages from which to decide.