Never heard of Regripper but will look into it. Is it easy to use?
I guess that depends on what you mean by "easy". 😉 Seriously, though…RegRipper is easy if you understand what it does and how to use it. If you have expectations about how it works and what it does, and those expectations aren't inline with the tool design and construction, then no, it's not easy to use.
Tools can be easy to use, but that can be deceptive and even dangerous to your case. RegRipper is certainly easy to use in the sense that it is "easy" to set up and run, the old fill in the blanks sort of thing. Where tools get dangerous, is they are so easy you don't spend the time and effort that you casn expalin what they do and how they do it. I love RegRipper, but I ran over 40 test cases with it, and manually verified all the results so that I could explain on the stand just what the tool had done and how it worked before I used it in an actual case. RegRipper is worth that kind of committment.
Easy to use - yes.
I use it in both civil and criminal matters.
Windows Registry Recovery from MiTech can be used as well and a good compliment. Do get at least a familiarity with how the registry is composed - you want to make sure you don't just garbage in garbage out the results. One tool and one use of it makes not the forensicator.