Good, easy-to-use, free registry cleaner

Hey all,

I am unsure whether this should go into the software or the help forums.

A friend of mine's computer is running very slow. She said it freezes at times, and that it takes forever for the computer to load up into windows (she is running WIndows XP on her laptop...no, unfortunately I do not know the specs).

She does not have her Windows Installation CD...that's home, far, far away.

So I am now helping her go through things such as detecting and removing spyware, defragging, etc. Another thing I am thinking of is a registry cleaner. I have already researched and used CCleaner and will use that, but I was wondering if there are any other ones that are easy-to-use, free, good registry cleaner? Remember, that the goals I am trying to obtain are 1) stop her computer from crashing so often and 2) make it that it doesn't take fifteen minutes to load up into windows.

Thanks for your suggestions on a good registry cleaner (and if you think of anything else I am missing, that advise as well).

How ya doing, buddy?

I have had her run SpyBot and Ad Aware. Both caught a slew of spyware. I am also having her defrag her hard drive, which may help too.

I am thinking of going with CCleaner next to work on the registry and other issues.

Next, I guess services.msc could be used, but my concern is it being something that is "user-friendly". Is there any program that can help out with this type of stuff?

Thanks for all your help so far.

There's nowhere I can't reach.