Registry Mechanic vs AML Free Registry Cleaner

Despite all the good reviews about PC Tools Registry Mechanic, I am disappointed by it.

I don't use registry cleaner but lately I would like to try it out and possibly find one to add into my collection. Under google search, Registry Mechanic by PC Tools is highly recommended by most reviews I have read. Unfortunately, I would not recommend it.

I did a very simple test myself a week ago on one of my virtual machines. This machine is always abused to use for bit torrent, software tryout, far-sites movie watching and etc. Thus I know its registry could be a mess. Because it is a virtual machine, it will be easy for me to recover it if something goes wrong during this registry test. In the course of searching good registry cleaner, AML Free Registry Cleaner is another good one on my mind. Thus, this test is Registry Mechanic vs AML. If you seek for professional opinions on registry cleaners, you may have to go some place else. Here is simply my opinion.

Registry Mechanic vs AML Free Registry Cleaner:

Test Targets	Registry Mechanic	AML Free Registry Cleaner
Version	10.0.134    (currently also known as Registry Cleaner 2011)	4.21
Price	Free to try (First 6 sections repairing trial); $29.95 to buy	Free

Test machine: Windows XP SP3.

Test Results based on problem found and detected:
Registry Mechanic 2011:	150 problems found
AML Free Registry Cleaner:	327 problems found

I went ahead to fix all problems found by AML and run the test twice (before and after reboot). Both results are the same and shown below:

Registry Mechanic 2011:	17 problems found
AML Free Registry Cleaner:	0 problem found

I don't find any abnormality after the fix by AML. Everything is working fine.

I cannot use Registry Mechanic to fix all problems it found because of its trial version restriction. However, I did something else interesting that may be an interest to you.

At pctools site, it features Registry Mechanic 2011 supports 17 languages but there is no further information about which languages it actually supports (or I could not find this information nor separate installers for other languages). When I installed it, it would not present me a language selection. I was curious how well its language detection was. Since that XP installed in this virtual machine is a multilingual version, I started fresh and switched to Traditional Chinese to test its language detection.

Why Traditional Chinese? Most software cannot handle well Traditional Chinese. They usually mistake the OS as Simplified Chinese if they try to be smart without letting the user to make a choice. Registry Mechanic suffers the same problem.

Similar to AML, the installation of Registry Mechanic is simple and straightforward. AML supports English only while Registry Mechanic claims to support multiple languages. Unfortunately it won't present you a language selection and it tries to be smart to use the language to match your OS. Sometimes it is not what you want. The worst is that it could present you a wrong UI language. Registry Mechanic mistakenly presented me everything in Simplified Chinese while my OS language is in Traditional Chinese. Because of this problem, some characters on screen are garbags.

As I mentioned before, I could not find the details of which 17 languages Registry Mechanic supports. Based on my test, it doesn't support Traditional Chinese but Simplified. To me, it is a serious problem for a software (which claims to support multiple languages but provides no language selection) to present the wrong UI language. Indeed, a lot of users would prefer to choose their languages.

There is one thing that annoys me most I found with AML Free Registry Cleaner. When it starts, it is always in a maximized mode. I personally don't like it. There is no way to configure AML to remember my preference. Other than this, I am fond of AML.

AML Free Registry Cleaner comes with free Disk Cleaner option. At first, I was surprised it found a lot of tmp files while CCleaner reported nothing about them. Later, I found that those tmp files are created everytime I reboot. Thus, I won't be able to get rid of them because they could be used or created by the system or the software (like anti-virus) you installed. They are needed whenever the system restarts. Thus, AWL Disk cleaner at this case is no use.

Conclusion

Between Registry Mechnanic and AML, I would highly recommend AML Free Registry Cleaner. The most importances are that AML detects more problems than Registry Mechanics and it is free!