Any suggestions on registry cleaner??

Also some good free anti-virus would be nice.

It's official policy on this forum not to recommend using any registry cleaners as many of them can do more harm than good. Suffice to say that if you want to take that chance, Google will turn up a good many to choose from --- but you have been warned!

However, Antivirus is a different proposition altogether, it's essential to have one as I'm sure you know already, so I've no hesitation in recommending a free one.

Avast Home Edition: http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
This is probably the best free one available. Updates are frequent and fast, where some of the others take ages to update, some even having frequent server problems.

Still, if you want a couple to choose from, there's also:

AVG Free Antivirus: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

or

Comodo Antivirus (only in beta yet, and requires XP-SP2):
http://antivirus.comodo.com/

Of those three, I still say Avast is the clear winner for reliability and ease of use.

This post has been edited by pip22: Feb 9 2007, 12:31 PM

http://www.ccleaner.com/ it fixes some registry issues, it's all I use and my PC flies - although thats mainly to do with the spec...

Tune Up Trial 2007 is pretty good.

The trouble is that this site has done so many posts where someone has cleaned the registry with some clearer that as stated they just cause risk causing more problems than they cure; however, there are are lot of things that you can do to clean your system.

Time to use your "runbox" to clean your computer,
(all these steps are done with the run box then)

deleting the prefetch files
-----------------------------
runbox command
- press keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste in the slot: prefetch
- press: enter
(the prefetch folder opens)
- press: ctrl + a
(select all is the same)
- press: shift + del
(deletes without prompt)

disc clean up
---------------
runbox command
- press keyboard buttons:winkey + r
- paste: cleanmgr.exe
- choose drive(normally C: )
- press: enter
(this process can take a long time)

checkdisk
------------
runbox command
- press the keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste in the slot: chkdsk /f /r
- press: enter
( black window appears)
- press: Y button
- press: enter
- reboot the comp
(this process is the longest, worse the screen may be
lost before hours later the computer arrives at the welcome screen)

disc defragmenter
----------------------
runbox command
- press the keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste in the slot: dfrg.msc
- press enter
(this process can take a long time)

deleting internet cookies, files and history
-------------------------------------------------
- press the keyboard buttons: winkey + r
- paste in the slot: inetcpl.cpl
- press: enter
- click: delete cookies
- click: delete file
- click: clear history

disable unwanted startups
------------------------------
runbox command
- press: winkey + r
- paste: msconfig
- press: enter
- click tab: start ups
- keep: the AV and firewall entriies enabled,
- disable: 100% unused or unneeded entries
- Unsure about the start up: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/
(IMPORTANT: enable all startups before running the Hijackthis program)

Advanced windows care does most of these automatically, and it's free.

http://majorgeeks.com/Advanced_WindowsCare...onal_d4991.html