As I discussed in my last post, all of the hardware, software and operating system configuration used by your computer are stored in the windows registry. All of the individual user preferences, profiles, accounts, etc. are also stored in the registry. That is why an problems with the registry can cause problems from an application not working quite right to the entire operating system crashing.
How Do You Know if Something is wrong with the Windows Registry?
Common symptoms of registry problems are:The windows registry is a hierarchical database and like all databases, it requires routine maintenance such as compacting, correcting file association, removing corrupted entries, removing tombstones and orphans. Let’s look at each of these items individually.
- Slow performance
- Hardware not working correctly or not at all
- Computer freezes
- You keep getting windows or application error messages
- System crashes (the famous blue screen of death)
- Takes “forever” to boot up
- Applications not opening or crashing periodically
- System won’t boot
Compacting – process of reclaiming hard disk space used by the database. Basically it is the process of defragging the database to improve efficiency.
Correcting file associations – anytime you install or uninstall something, changes are made to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry hive. Over time there can be a lot of unnecessary or incorrect information stored in this key. Cleaning makes sure that file associations exist only for files that can actually be opened on the machine exist
Corrupted entries – they are just taking up space and are useless and could cause problems if a process tried to use them so they need to be removed
Tombstones – this is data that was written during a specific operation and then marked for deletion during the next compacting or cleaning.
Orphans – are entries that no longer belong to any application or piece of hardware because it no longer exists or in no longer installed on the system
How Do You Clean the Windows Registry?
You could manually edit the registry and remove all of the unnecessary and corrupted data. But unless you are an expert on all of the possible entries in the windows registry, I don’t recommend that you try doing this because if you make a mistake, your operating system may never boot again.The best way is to use a windows registry cleaner. Registry are software programs written by people who are experts on every possible entry in the registry. These programs will perform all of the necessary maintenance we described above as well as specifically look for damage done by viruses, Trojans and other forms of malware. They will try to repair and/or recover corrupted data if possible. They do this by analyzing your registry entries and comparing then to a set of ‘normalized’ entries. Normalized means that the data is consistent and properly formatted and is a technical term used in databases.
Registry cleaners are a much safer way of doing the routine maintenance on your windows registry.
Where Do You Get Registry Cleaners?
There are two kinds of registry cleaners, commercial and free ones. Here are some of the differences:| Feature | FREE | Commercial |
| Quarantine or delete suspected entries | Delete | Quarantine |
| Provide technical support | NO | YES |
| Offer a FREE scan | NO | YES |
| Money Back Guarantee | NO | YES |
Commercial registry cleaners usually do a better job and are safer to use. At least one free registry cleaner is good, but, unless you know a lot about the working registry, use a commercial program.
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