Registry Cleaners: Boon or Boondoggle?

How to Clean Your Windows Registry and Speed Up Your PC​

SOURCE: PC World - How to Clean Your Windows Registry and Speed Up Your PC



A cluttered Registry can slow Windows to a crawl, but cleaning it up effectively isn't easy. Steve Bass reviews some of the leading Registry cleaners, and offers tips to help you get your Registry down to size and improve your PC's performance.
Steve Bass, PC World


Let's start with a little quiz. I say "Big, bloated, and full of errors." What do you say? Right, "Windows Registry." One more: "Messing with it is risky." If you guessed the Registry again, you pass. While fooling around with your Windows Registry does involve some risk, cleaning it out can have an impact on your PC's overall performance.

The Windows Registry is an essential system file that houses a massive collection of details about your computer--where programs are stored, which helper programs (known as DLLs) are shared among your various applications, listings of all your Start-menu shortcuts, and pointers to the programs that fire up when you click on an icon. And that's just the beginning.

Practically everything you do in Windows is recorded somewhere in the Registry. For instance, the URL for this article probably has an entry now. The paths to the last dozen or so images or documents you opened are there, too, as are the details of the programs you most recently installed or uninstalled.

Here's the problem: If you pry open the Registry, you'll probably find it about as cluttered as a teenager's bedroom. That's because Windows doesn't efficiently clean up after itself as it goes about its daily business. It constantly creates new entries, but seldom--if ever--removes them after they're no longer needed.

Compounding that problem are applications that are too inept to uninstall all of the Registry entries they create; far too often, program upgrades and installers leave unneeded pointers in the Registry. So the Registry becomes bloated with unnecessary entries, slowing down your system.


Registry Cleaners: Boon or Boondoggle?

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Top Ten Registry Dos (and Don'ts)

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Registry Cleaners: How They Fared

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[william gunkel]

Thanks Brink and Steve, for a better understanding of Registry Cleaners. I am so thankful for this Forum it has answered many questions and solved many problems. I have been a computer user for a year now. I use AVG 8.0 Internet Security paid version along with 2008 TuneUp Utilities paid version. These Along with all that came with Vista Home Premium has keep me up and running. If anyone has any comments on the above they are welcome.

 

[mike-cow]

Thanks Brink and Steve, for a better understanding of Registry Cleaners. I am so thankful for this Forum it has answered many questions and solved many problems. I have been a computer user for a year now. I use AVG 8.0 Internet Security paid version along with 2008 TuneUp Utilities paid version. These Along with all that came with Vista Home Premium has keep me up and running. If anyone has any comments on the above they are welcome.

I tried tuneup utilities for a while, and found it to be quite a good piece of software. I didn't buy it though, since I didn't find anything that a fairly thought through set of free software doesn't do. I tend to recommend it to people who don't have time/knowledge enough to figure out a bunch of different programs to keep their computer in shape.

 

[usmc_nam_vet]

Auslogics Registry Defrag, And Trend Micro are what I use now. It seems to do a good job. I check the registry every now and then and delete left overs