When you surf the internet these days, you see tons of advertisements for “registry cleaners.” These ads prophesize doom and gloom for your computer if you don’t use a registry cleaner regularly. What these ads don’t make clear, however, is what exactly a “registry” is, what it does, and why it needs to be cleaned. This article will try to answer these questions for you.

The registry is at the core of the Windows operating system. It is basically a database that stores all the settings for your computer. This includes settings for every software program, every computer user, and every piece of hardware connected to your computer (such as printers or digital cameras).

The Windows registry is constantly growing. Every time you have a change to your system, such as adding a new user, installing a new program, or attaching a new piece of hardware, the registry is updated with these new settings. When your computer performs almost any task, it has to check the registry for the settings it needs first.

Unfortunately, your computer’s registry breaks down over time in two different ways. It gets bloated and corrupted.

When you remove things from your computer, such as uninstalling a program, deleting a user, or detaching a piece of hardware, those settings are not necessarily deleted from the registry. Consequently, a lot of “junk” information accumulates in your registry, such as obsolete data, duplicate information, or blank entries. Over time, this can make your registry grow to a huge size.

The problem with an enormous registry is that it takes your computer longer to search through the registry to find the information it needs for any given task (and your computer performs tons of tasks a second). The overall effect is that your computer gradually starts running slower and slower.

The data in your registry can also get scrambled over time. As you move files around on your computer, the links between those files and their registry entries can become broken, go missing, or become linked to the wrong files. Information from uninstalled programs can conflict with newly installed programs. Everyday electronic wear and tear can corrupt important files. All of this can cause your computer to stop working properly.

Your computer may take a long time to boot up, shut down, or open programs. Those programs may freeze up or crash. You may begin to get popup Windows error messages, particular ones telling you that a certain .DLL file is corrupted or can’t be found. Your entire computer may lock up, crash, or reboot randomly. In a worst-case scenario, your computer may not start up at all.

Registry cleaning software can fix these problems by doing two things. First, it scans your registry for all of the obsolete junk information that you don’t need anymore and is just clogging up your registry, and deletes it. This reduces the size of your registry. Your computer, now having to search through a smaller registry to find the information it needs, should start running faster.

Second, registry cleaners search your registry for error, such as scrambled links, contradictory information, or corrupted files, and then repair them. It straightens out links and replaces missing or corrupted files. This should resolve the error messages or other performance problems you have on your computer.

To maintain the health and speed of your computer, it is important to install a registry repair program. You should run it on a regular basis, as often as once a week. Since it can be difficult to remember to do this, look for a registry cleaner that has a scheduler, so that can automatically run itself at a time of your choosing (like at 3:00 AM, when you’re not using your computer). A registry repair program is a small, inexpensive investment that can add years to the lifespan of your computer.

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