What do you think of TuneUp Utilities 2014?

Is it snake oil or worth buying?

also, is its registry cleaner good or best to stick to CCleaner or no reg cleaner at all?

I have a fresh Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center installation

I stay far away from tune up apps. An app like ccleaner has always been enough for me.

I do NOT recommend the use of a registry cleaner unless you have an established problem you cannot solve and you have tried everything else. In other words, "use as a last resort" only. Do not use a registry cleaner as a proactive maintenance task.

Best way to keep the registry clean? Install a virtual machine and test and experiment with all of your software in the vm. Only load stuff you actually need in the host machine.

pparks1 said:

I stay far away from tune up apps. An app like ccleaner has always been enough for me.

I do NOT recommend the use of a registry cleaner unless you have an established problem you cannot solve and you have tried everything else. In other words, "use as a last resort" only. Do not use a registry cleaner as a proactive maintenance task.

Best way to keep the registry clean? Install a virtual machine and test and experiment with all of your software in the vm. Only load stuff you actually need in the host machine.

Click to expand...

I absolutely totally agree.

As it happens I just wrote about my "registry cleaning history" only a few minutes ago at our sister site the Seven Forums, I'd like to quote a part of that post of mine here, to tell a true story about me and registry cleaning:

Kari said:

...
...
Speaking about myself as an example, I have not used (not a single time) any registry cleaners since I migrated from XP to Vista end of 2006 when it was released to manufacturers. Not with Vista, not with Seven and now not with Eight. Also I never "clean" the registry manually; the only registry editing I have done in the past over 7 years since XP days is an occasional value change in registry, for instance enabling something changing its value from 0 to 1. For this I use the built-in registry editor.


I have had exactly 0 registry issues during this time.
...
...

Click to expand...

(From Startup repair offline Windows 7 - Windows 7 Help Forums)

Kari

Only ever tried a reg cleaner once. never again /slash

Agree with above, stay away from it

I wouldn't use Tuneup Utilities 2014 if it was free.
Registry cleaners by their very nature are dangerous and largely useless. The only place you will see major benefits are on the websites of the providers. Mark Russinovich has similar views. If you don't know who he is, do a Google search.

You may want to consider creating a RAM disk, disabling superfetch, clearing your cache and disabling your pagefile as well while you are at it.

Don't underestimate the placebo effect of snake oil - it might be worth it and your PC might seem faster

adamf said:

You may want to consider creating a RAM disk, disabling superfetch, clearing your cache and disabling your pagefile as well while you are at it.

Don't underestimate the placebo effect of snake oil - it might be worth it and your PC might seem faster

Click to expand...

I have 32 GB RAM and I used to always disable hibernation and page file on Windows 7 for years with 0 problems.

But on Windows 8.1, if I disable the page file, I would get low memory erros while running WMP so I now never touch that Virtual memory which Windows set as 5 GB for my 32 GB RAM. (better than the default that Windows 7 sets which was 32 GB)

I always disable hibernation though as I have an SSD and I don't want this stupid fast shutdown/startup. When I shut down, I want a real full shutdown without having to enter command prompt to enter any commands for a real shutdown

Do as you wish mate - there is a difference between address space and memory though.