Review: USB Scrub Cleans Your Registry Of Old USB Sticks
UPDATE: USB Scrub by Nexcopy now supports Win7 32/64bit
Did you know Windows will make over 260 registry entries with a single enumeration of a USB stick? This means for those with multiple flash drives your registry will get extremely cluttered and bogged down.
With flash drives dirt cheap these days, you’ll find at least a couple dozen going into your computer through the year. That would be over 6,240 registry entries.
USB Scrub is a free utility which performs a deep cleaning of those unused drivers and registry edits.
We gave USB Scrub a try, and it worked great. We went from enumerating a single USB stick in 45 seconds to enumerating that stick in less that 12 seconds.
In addition, if you have a USB stick that doesn’t perform correctly or the Windows OS doesn’t see it, chances are the USB Scrub will clear up those problems and your drive will work once again. This is because a registry entry can become corrupt and simply clearing it out will resolve your issue.
So lets take a closer look.
Using RegShot [a free application which takes a snap shot before and after an event and compares only the changed registry values] I took a snap shot before and after a USB stick was connected and ejected. The result was this:
- 78 Registry Keys where created
- 183 Registry Values where added
- 261 Registry edits in total!
Here is a snap shop. Click the image to get the full text file.
Next, I took a snap shot of the registry before a stick was connected…then ran USB Scrub…then took the second registry snap shot, this is what I got:
- 1 Registry Key added
- 3 Registry Values added
Clearly we have a big difference. Clearly we have a great cleaning tool for USB devices in Windows.
If you have a USB flash drive not working correctly, a slow computer or you are a heavy user of removable drives, give USB Scrub a try. You’ll see a noticeable difference in USB enumeration.
As a closing note…when the enumeration speed went from 45 seconds to 12 seconds, USB Scrub reported that it cleared over 9,000 registry entries.
USB Scrub is a free utility. There is no malware or spyware.
Unfortunately, USB Scrub only supports Windows XP. The maker [Nexcopy] said Vista and Windows 7 will be supported shortly.
UPDATE: Download link supports Windows 7 and Windows 10. Does not support Windows XP or Windows 8.
Download USB Scrub. Source: EverythingUSB.com.
Tags: clean registry, nexcopy, usb scrub
