That's the thing is not a Register cleaning comparison only and it can't be said what boosted what exactly,
Other considerations:
- It's a Sony VAIO, a nightmare to maintain, and if you try to reinstall Windows from a standard Windows installer you're in deep trouble, for me it's the worst mobile PC ever made, it has special requirements that had to be done exactly, and maybe things will work, a huge list of inconveniences other brands don't even have, anyway first mistake, like a bad girlfriend, beautiful outside and a ****ing ***** inside.
- It's a never maintained PC and amobile one: everything on C:, fragmented the crap out, and lot of bloatware and unnecessary apps.
- I create partitions for Temp, PageFile, on a second HDD and User Docs and Any other data, on the primary HDD, if only 1 HDD, like in this case, the second data partition can't be created, but with this distinction, like Free BSD does at install time, much of the fragmentation by temp files is lowered on C: significantly, having the PageFile.sys on a single partition prevents its fragmentation and inducing fragmentation on C:, this optimization by partition wasn't made here.
- Uninstalling of apps would have helped and at least a Windows Defrag.
- This was almost 5 years ago, Windows 8.1 is a highly optimized version of Windows 8, and has a Metro Start Menu, but hey at least it has one.
- I have used my current PC extensively for about 6 years with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and then Switched to Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, with the same hardware, 8.1 was easily 2x the speed of 7, no contest needed, consistent with what a ex Microsoft engineers said so, he was in charge of apps and driver performance and stability testing, he designed the tests, on YouTube, Bernacles Nerdgasm or similar, he now monetize on YouTube for a living, so depends on which PC you test it, yeah, sometimes is imperceptible and in a hurry I would skip the Registry cleaners and even the defragmentation, but if I can do my work properly I will include them for sure
So of course any PC cleaning would be hindered a lot by the extremely crappy VAIO environment, in a environment, as I would create by optimizong that or any PC would be more clear the Registry cleaning environment, but right now I can't do it, I have lots of things to do, I come here to chillax not to get even more work and testing. Maybe someday.
I have discarded some of them because they stopped working or being developed on any Windows after Windows XP, and some where crappy apps not worth using them, it's kinds of risky yes, but I tend to test them and use them and offer review in forums if I have the time. Anyway, yes I know it's controversial and sometimes adverse but if you look at the reasons besides performance I think they're valid to risk it, at least IMO.
PS: E mentioned that Windows made a copy of often used Registry parts in the Registry itself for faster access, begs the question: why, if it's so efficient?