How to clean your Windows registry and speed up your PC

Let’s alpha with a little quiz. I say, “Big, bloated, and abounding of errors.” What do you say? Right, “Windows Registry.’1 more: ‘Messing with it is risky.” If you calculate the anthology again, you pass. While bluffing about with your Windows anthology does absorb some risk, charwoman it out can accept a absolute appulse on your PC’s all-embracing performance.

The Windows anthology is a athenaeum for a massive accumulating of capacity about your computer—where programs are stored, which abettor programs (known as DLLs) are aggregate amid your assorted applications, listings of all your Alpha card shortcuts, and pointers to the programs that blaze up back you bang on an icon. And that’s aloof the beginning.

The aphotic and alarming abode accepted as the Windows registry.

Practically aggregate you do in Windows is filed in the registry. Example, the URL for this commodity apparently has an access now, somewhere. The paths to the aftermost dozen or so images or abstracts you opened are there, too, as are the capacity of the programs you accept installed or uninstalled.

Here’s the problem: If you pry accessible the registry, you’ll acquisition it about as chaotic as a teenager’s bedroom. That’s because Windows doesn’t calmly apple-pie up afterwards itself as it goes about its circadian business. It consistently creates new entries, but seldom—if ever—removes old entries afterwards they’re no best needed.

Compounding this botheration is the actuality that applications are usually too inept to uninstall all of the anthology entries they create. Far too often, affairs updates and installers leave added pointers in the registry, so the anthology becomes aggrandized with accidental entries, slowing bottomward your system.

Registry cleaners: Boon or boondoggle?

The big catechism we’re allurement in this allotment is whether a anthology cleaner will absolutely acceleration up your PC, authoritative it cossack added bound and run faster. The acknowledgment is, absolutely &  un-equivocally, maybe. That’s right a big fat probably  because aggregate depends on the action of your registry. It additionally depends on the capability of the anthology cleaner you choose, and there are a lot to accept from.

To acquisition out which anthology cleaner catches the best errors, is the safest and easiest to use, and (just as important) creates the atomic hassles, we activated bristles accepted anthology cleaners, abounding of which came recommended by PCWorld readers. We advised two chargeless articles (Advanced Windows Care and RegSeeker) and three bartering ones (jv16 PowerTools, Anthology First Aid, and RegSupreme Pro).

We approved anniversary apparatus on three computers: a blowzy assignment PC appliance Windows XP SP3, on a aboriginal Fujitsu Lifebook T-Series laptop active Vista, and on an old ThinkPad laptop.* We ran the anthology browse and adjustment bore of anniversary application, rebooted the system, and watched for problems that would announce that the “cleaning” action bankrupt something. We additionally approved to actuate whether the arrangement seemed friskier post-cleanse. Afterwards anniversary test, we adequate the systems to their aboriginal accompaniment of ataxia with Acronis TrueImage.

Before we acknowledge the results, we action some important tips to accumulate in apperception before, during, and afterwards your forays into the registry. Being able for what's complex and demography the able precautions are analytical to authoritative this a acknowledged undertaking. If you demand to skip advanced to the results, you can bang the access for anniversary affairs in the table of capacity on the left.