Scan Windows Registry

Scan Windows Registry

The Windows registry is just a ever-growing database used in all Windows system which keeps all the settings, options, preferences, and hardware options of the user. It keeps growing every time you boot Windows. Each time your computer starts, it initially checks the registry to let all installed software know the settings, documents, program paths, and much more stuff. The registry slowly accumulates junk this way, and this slowly leads to a degradation in the computer’s speed.

Every time you put a new program on your computer and then delete that program, remnants of the program will remain in the registry record as well.

Here’s the rub — After you have instituted a change to the registry, you can’t undo it without specialized software (or manual editing).

Doing a manual edit of your registry would be a disaster and is NOT something the average computer user should attempt. Think of it this way: the best registry is still a virgin registry.

Ever since Windows 95, the majority of software applications will intentionally place permanent entries in Windows registry for a variety of reasons, that aren’t removed during an uninstall. This left over junk continues to gather until a registry cleaner application is employed to get clean it out.

Another thing to keep in mind, some computer crashes will help corrupt your registry.

The criteria of a top-notch registry cleaner

Registry cleaners are designed to scan the registry, identify, and delete any unneeded entries in there. But that is the ideal situation. The reality is, there isn’t a perfect registry cleaner. All registry cleaners have complex formulas which help them “identify” what is a vital key and which is trash. There’s no method of forseeing if removing a registry key will affect computer performance in subtle ways. So, any good registry cleaner should allow you to backup the registry before you start cleaning the registry.

Here is a manual way to back-up the registry very simply:

Click (from Windows menu) Start – Run
Type: regedit (which opens up the registry editor window)
From the box, hit File – Export
Save it as something you’ll remember, preferably including the date

When you observe, there are really four kinds of registry cleaners:

Deep scanning registry cleaners
Light scan registry cleaners
Balanced scanning registry cleaners
Virus infected registry cleaners

A deep cleaner is actually dangerous to your system because it may remove some important registry keys by being overzealous. A light scanning one, isn’t much use either; it merely skims the surface. A fake registry cleaner is dangerous, since it is spyware disguised as a registry cleaner. Do not download something just because it’s free!

The “best” registry cleaner is one that:

Defragments your registry
Allows a backup of the registry
Asks you if you would like to delete each entry and offers alternatives
Perform other spin-off tasks in addition to registry work

Rather than just suffering with the snail-like speed of your computer and the never-ending blue-screens, you can actually do something about it.  Do yourself a favor and get yourself a good registry cleaner.  It will help your system run as smoothly and quickly as the day it was brand new.

Related posts:

  1. Can Windows XP Registry Cleaners Cure My Computer Woes?
  2. The Windows XP Registry Cleaner Explained
  3. How To Get a Free Registry Cleaner?
  4. An Introduction To Wise Registry Cleaner
  5. Registry Cleaning – How It Can Make Your Computer Run Faster