By Request: Cleaning your Registry – How and Why?

regedit The Windows Registry. Most people cringe when they hear this, or are afraid of even messing with it, until they see that ad on the Internet claiming that their computer is slow, and they need to buy their registry cleaner! Heck yeah! Whip out your Credit Card, and fire that bad boy up right? Well….

The Registry is basically a database, holding information for the entire operating system, it’s programs, and settings. If you were to look at any given registry, it would be hundreds of thousands of lines long (mine is 1.9 million lines long in Vista Ultimate). With this in mind, even a 100 or so keys in the registry that are “dirty” are not going to slow your computer down in a noticeable manner. Now that being said, if you have a corrupt key for an application, it may cause issues with that particular application, for sure, but a registry cleaner isn’t going to fix those issues!

So, is cleaning out your registry going to speed up your computer? Doubt it. Should you clean your registry anyway? Yes, but don’t stop there!

What do I use to clean my registry? CCleaner. It’s a free, easy to use, and very good system cleaner. Not only does it clean your registry, it will also clean up browser, application, temp, and java junk files, and even comes with an application remover – it’s faster than using the one in Add/Remove Programs! Using CCleaner on your system can definitely speed up a sluggish computer.

How often should you run CCleaner? That is entirely up to you. I usually run it about once a month. Some people run it daily, and others weekly. This part is entirely up to you, but I wouldn’t go over a month between cleanings.

One thing to remember when cleaning the registry; make sure to ALWAYS make a backup! CCleaner prompts you to do so, before making any changes to the registry.

My only gripe with CCleaner, is during the install, it wants to install the Yahoo! toolbar. I HATE installers that always want to throw toolbars in my browser!!!!