Free Registry Defrag

Can anyone recommend a free registry defragmenter? I used to use Auslogics but this is now asking for registration. I also don't want the one that is listed HERE. I've had a good look around but personal experience would be useful! Thanks

PageDefrag (don't be misled by the name!) from SysInternals. I can't praise the SysInternals stuff enough - so good that Microsoft bought them. Check out all their tools (especially Process Explorer).

Unfortunately I don't think this works with Windows VIsta (sorry forgot to mention I have that OS) as when opening up the .zip file it just comes up with an error message.

I've always used NTREGOPT; it's good, effective, reliable and very small.

It works on all Win from NT to Vista.

see: http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

What error does it give you? if it's something like "Error loading PageDefrag Driver" All you need to do is right click on PageDefrag.exe and select Run As Administrator. Unfortunately it doesn't support 64bit versions of windows.

IMHO: Reading PageDefrag I see that this is a different beast from a pure Registry Defragger/Optimiser, like NTREGOPT.

I understand that PageDefrag will defrag the large system files, like the Registry, in terms of their layout on the disk, i.e. it will try and make all their blocks contiguous on the disk, regardless of their contents.

Whereas NTREGOPT will remove all the unused entries within the Registry files and make them smaller.

Also NTREGOPT is simpler to operate than PageDefrag.

Depends what you want.

Here's a quote from NTREGOPT :

The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch", thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously modified or deleted keys.

Note that the program does NOT change the contents of the registry in any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive (as the PageDefrag program from SysInternals does). The optimization done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the minimum size possible.