The Windows® registry is more or less prone to becoming corrupt over time. There isn’t anything you actually do as a PC user to cause this to happen, it just handles so much data that over time it becomes bloated and can require a good once over to clear out the old bad information.

Unfortunately so much of a computer system depends on the registry file system it effects the overall performance of your computer. Frequent freezing, crashing, DLL and Runtime errors are all symptoms of a potentially corrupt registry.

Fortunately you can clean the windows® registry using a utility program. These registry cleaners scan, backup and repair items that could otherwise take the laymen PC user weeks to uncover. For this article we’re going to assume you have a registry cleaner already, if not we suggest you compare registry cleaners such as Registry Easy, Regcure and Registry Mechanic before buying one. It’s a great utility to have on hand and the improvement in performance is worth the price.

Scanning

Before we can fix anything we need to know what is wrong. Registry repair programs perform a complete scan of the registry file system. It can take 1-10 minutes to complete this scan depending on how old your computer is and which program you’re using.

Once the scan is complete you’ll be presented with a list of registry entries that could be causing troubles for your computer system.

Backup

Before you ever make a change to a file structure as important as the Windows® registry you must backup the current settings. Why? If for some reason the changes made cause your PC to crash or perform even worse you’ll have a copy of the settings prior to making the changes and can easily revert back to the way things were.

Most registry cleaners have a built in backup utility. Be sure to use this before going to the next step, repairing the registry. As an alternative to a registry cleaners backup functionality you can also use Windows® restore points.

I personally suggest you use both because it ensures you have two options for restoring old settings.

Repairing

The final step in cleaning out your registry is repair those items found in the scan. Not ever item found during the scan is a serious error that is causing your PC to perform slowly. Quite often it’s only a handful of errors that are really causing the troubles, but it’s impossible to know which ones.

Registry cleaners have two options for performing the repair, a manual and automatic method. The manual method allows you to go through the entire list of errors found and choose which items to repair. I usually opt for the automatic repair which is much faster. The automatic method repair all items found in the list, if something changes for the worse you always have your backup and restore files handy.

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