The Windows Registry is a lot like a liver.  Hardly anyone knows what it does, just that life stinks when it has problems.  So what do we do?  We thank our lucky stars that there are well-paid people with white lab coats who know what they are doing.  In this case, the white coats are from Uniblue, and their cure for cirrhosis of the registry is their new Registry Booster.  Will the medication provide a cure for our ills, or will prove to be a placebo, like so many of those “enhancing” pills advertised on late-night infomercials?

Specifications:

What Uniblue claims:

• Clean your system and boost performance
  Boost system performance by cleaning out all missing, unwanted, obsolete and corrupt registry entries automatically with Registry Booster.
   

• Repair your PC and keep it tuned
  Dramatically improve your computing experience by repairing all registry problems and preventing application seizures and crashes.
   

• Enhance System Stability and Efficiency
  Even the newest of computers face the risk of errors or corruption - Registry Booster will prevent errors while keeping your PC stable and roaring at peak efficiency.
   

• Exceptionally Simple to Use
  Set in a highly intuitive, attractive, logical and user-friendly graphical user interface, Registry Booster sets the standard for ease-of-use.
   

• Safe and Trusted
  Avoid crashes, seizures, slow downs and error messages with the safest and most trusted solution from a leading software vendor.

Installation:

     The Registry Booster comes in the form of a downloadable executable that weighs in at a paltry 4MB. Installation is very straightforward, all the user has to do is choose the destination folder.  All of the program configuration happens after the initial execution.    

Running Registry Booster:

     Upon initial execution of the Registry Booster, the user first sees the system “Overview”.  This overview shows an overall health status of the registry, as well as how many errors have been fixed to date, and how many registry defrags have been performed.  The user can also initiate the scan from the large “Start Scan” button.   At the top we can see four different tabs;  the Overview, Registry Scan, Restore, and Settings tabs.  The user is also bombarded with advertisement from Uniblue’s other products, like the Speed Up My PC and Spy Eraser applications, as well as the Power Suite range of utilities.

     On the Registry Scan tab, we can set the options for the scanner itself, these options mainly being what we want to scan.  We can also launch the scanner from here. 

     Within the Registry Scan tab, there are a few options on the left: Registry Scan, Scan Results, and Registry Defrag.  Once we run the Registry Scan, we are taken to the Scan Results, which show us the errors the scanner has uncovered.  The scan only takes a few minutes, and does not hurt overall system performance much while scanning.  For a utility whose aim is ease of use, the description for the errors it finds are lacking.  I can imagine Joe Sixpack sitting at home wondering what in the world any of it means, and just arbitrarily checking all items.  As with any tampering of the registry, always back it up!  Uniblue has made that function very easy, offering to create full or incremental backups of the registry with every scan. 

     Once the registry has been thoroughly cleaned, it is recommended to run a registry defrag as well.  This also is a fairly painless procedure that lasts a mere couple of minutes. After both the scan and the defrag, Registry Booster will prompt the user to reboot.

     If the end user ever runs into problems where a needed registry entry was deleted, the user can use the restore functionality to bring back old copies of the registry.  The utility allows the user to select from any backup that has been created, denoting which are partial backups and which are full backups.

     The last tab is the general settings tab for the program.  Within settings, we can change the boot up options, add items to be ignored, or look at scan logs.  By default, the scanner loads an icon into the system tray and launches the program to initiate a scan.  Why a registry cleaner needs to have a constantly running process is beyond me.

     The Ignore list allows the user to add “safe” items that are getting tagged for removal, so as to give the user a way to avoid headaches about certain things.  Unfortunately, the implementation here is weak, as to add an item to the ignore list requires the user to know what the registry path is.  It would have been much easier to allow the user to add items from the registry scan results via a context menu, however the only options there for specific items in the results is “Select All” or “Select None”.

Update: 6/19/2007 Uniblue has now added the functionality exactly as described above which allows an item to be very easily added to the Ignore List by right-clicking on the relevant entry from the scan results page.  It is nice to see Uniblue responding so quickly with this type of functionality addition! - Editor.

     Finally, the Log Details tab allows us to look at the results of all scans that have been run.  When looking at a Scanning Log, we can look at the scan date, the amount of entries found, the amount fixed, and a list of all the failing entries.

Conclusion:

     Where Uniblue has succeeded with the Registry Booster 2 is that it is a small and very easy to use registry scanning tool that does make a difference in system performance.  After defragging the registry, my boot time decreased from roughly one minute to around 45 seconds.   However, I am bothered by some of the implementation.  Advertising for other software on a fully paid-for utility seems unprofessional to me.  The muddy explanations for the errors are not very helpful, and asking users to manually find the registry path for items to add to the ignore list could have been easily avoided.  I am also bugged by the insistence of the program to run in the system tray.  This may be a bit of a rant, however, 90% of software that wants to run a background service or load an icon into the system tray really does not need to.   While this is disabled easily enough, there just is not a justifiable need to have one in the first place. What it comes down to is if you want a quick registry scanner with a clean interface, Uniblue's Registry Booster 2 is for you.  If you need or want advanced features, however, then it is best to look elsewhere.

Innovation:	6.0 out of 10
Performance:	9.0 out of 10
Quality:	6.0 out of 10
Stability:	9.0 out of 10
Overclocking:	N/A
Software/Drivers Pack:	N/A
Value:	6. out of 10
Overall Rating 7.5
Project Skill Level (10 being most difficult)	2 out of 10