Whenever you make any changes to the computer it will affect the information which is stored in the windows 7 registry. If you change the clock, date, wallpaper or home page then it will affect the registry. No matter what you change it will make changes in the registry. The registry will also be affected whenever you install new hardware or software.
The windows 7 registry is also read whenever your computer does anything. The registry is a very important system on your computer.
Registry Basics
To optimize your computer you will need to understand some basics about the registry. The registry is organized into a variety of folders, or hives which are important for different areas on your computer.
HKEY Current User
The current user key has lots of settings required for the user who is currently connected and using the computer.
HKEY Users
This key contains all of the information for all of the users on the computer
HKEY Local Machine
The local machine key includes information about the software, applications and hardware of your computer
HKEY Classes Root
This contains the information about the registered application including the file associations on your computer
HKEY Current Config
The current config key contains the information learned when windows 7 boots up. This information is replaced every time your computer starts up again.
Inside all of these hives there are a series of keys and different values. The values will affect how the computer works.
Editing the Registry
The registry can be edited using regedit which is included in windows. However, this is quite dangerous as there is a chance that the problem can actually be made much worse than it is at the moment.
Registry Scanner
A much safer alternative to manually editing the registry is to use a registry scanner. This makes it easy to find the corrupt keys and help to fix them. A registry cleaner will automatically use all the Windows 7 performance tweaks algorithms it has and it will speed up your computer.