I am a believer of the principle: Never touch a running system. Lately I broke it twice by installing Windows XP SP3 and by running the new version of PC Tune-Up 2.0 from Large Software. In both cases promises of getting a more responsive system have been the reason to try it.

After installing SP3 on my trusty 3 year old XP system I was open to test if the speed of the system can be improved further with a registry clean-up and optimization tool like PC Tune-Up.

This tool is very easy to use and guides you through the process in four steps. Depending on your system this can take several hours. On my PC it found over 1,000 issues in the registry and the discovery of these took about 3 hours. As I said above I never touch a running system.

Messing with the registry is dangerous. That is why the first step of PC Tune-Up is to make a backup. So just in case your system is not stable after the tuning you can go back to your previous state.

After the smart scan PC Tune-Up shows a list of issues it can fix, delete, etc. in the registry. I just selected everything and let it do its thing.

The last step is to defrag the registry and then I was done after two reboots. I guess the 2nd reboot was for items it could not delete as they have been in use.

After this step I did not feel much difference using the system. It is clean now, which is a good feeling. PC Tune Up offers two more features that improve performance noticeably. The Optimization feature is a collection of settings that make Windows XP more responsive. This works great. The start menu for instance loads much faster and overall the system feels faster to work with.

The other feature is the Startup manager. It shows you all the programs and services that are loaded at boot time. In the manager you can remove services that you are sure you do not need to improve boot-up time.

Overall PC Tune-Up is a great choice to optimize and clean your operating system without having to become an expert in registry tweaks. PC Tune-Up is very easy to use and just focuses on what is needed.

The latest PC Tune-Up 2.0 Windows optimization tool is compatible with the latest Service Packs for the Windows XP (SP3) and Windows Vista (SP1) platforms.
PC Tune-Up sells for $29.95 and is also available as free trial at the Large Software site.