The registry of the Windows operating system is a big filing system that maintains the preferences and settings for your hardware and software
. It's almost like the central nervous system of your computer. Windows constantly references the registry as you use your computer, and so having a clean registry will positively impact the overall performance of your PC.
How The Registry Gets Cluttered
Sadly the Windows registry is notorious for becoming cluttered and corrupted by a lot of causes. The most common cause of problems is when there is a buildup of temporary and obsolete files. These are often "leftover" files from software that has not been completely removed from your system during an uninstall procedure.
Registy files can also easily get corrupted and ruined by bad installation procedures as well as spyware and viruses.
How This Causes Problems
Dealing with a cluttered registry is much like having a fan that is clogged up with dust. The fan isn't slowing down because it's "old" in a chronological sense. It just needs to be cleaned out. The same is true of your computer. Computers tend to slow down over time as they are used because they get clogged and cluttered with a lot of leftover junk and extra files.
Making use of a registry cleaner program is a fantastic way to remove your computer of all the useless unnecessary files that are bogging it down. There is no way you could do this manually on your own. Even if you knew exactly where to look it would still take hours upon hours to remove all the files.
Recommended Software
There are a number of effective softwares out there that can let you quickly and easily scan your registry and clear out your useless entries.
RegCure is our favorite program because it's easy to use, fast, and isn't a memory hog. It's the most user-friendly and streamlined program that we've tested.
Registry Mechanic is another good option, and has a couple extra features. However the only bad thing is that it tends to be a system hog, and slower machines might find it to be difficult to run.