Windows Clean Registry

[Evelyn Normington]

Thelonger we have our PC, the more frequently we add new downloads, installations, and updates to our machine. There is nothing wrong with downloading new programs or installing new updates, but it may eventually slow down your computer.

One of the most critical things to remember is that the registry is a very fragile component of your computer. If you mess with it too much or incorrectly, it can essentially destroy Windows. With that being said, it is essential to exercise caution while cleaning the registry in Windows 10 and 11, especially if you are doing it manually.

Another method that can contribute to a healthier registry is the DISM from Windows. According to Microsoft, Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM.exe) is a command-line tool that can be used to service and prepare Windows images and system errors. DISM helps to repair any issues that may be associated with broken registry entries and can significantly reduce registry issues on your PC.

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As I understand it, cleaning the registry is not going to really do much for your computer performance if anything. The registry contains thousands of keys and cleaning out a few dead ones won't really make much difference.

The registry is a huge database optimized for speed. It doesn't matter if some game left its config options in there. Other programs aren't going to care and Windows can handle the memory usage just fine by paging (i.e. only loading what's needed) and other techniques.

The only time a registry cleaner could be useful is if a program was not uninstalled properly; in this case you might have some specific problem such as a broken file association. But if you are not seeing problems and are just looking for speed you are probably wasting your time. Not only that, but deleting stuff from the registry can break things in subtle or hard-to-fix ways. Hopefully a good registry cleaner backs up all its changes so that you can easily restore your old registry... assuming your computer boots properly after the cleaning.

If your windows system has lots of strange bugs that are due to registry problems you might be better served by re-installing. Before XP I used to re-install Windows every 6 months. Now I almost never have to do it. I would avoid registry cleaners.

I have used CCleaner often, and in fact, also been suggested registry defragmentation tools.

Mark Russinovich, who I trust a lot with my Windows machines, also has a PageDefrag tool that works on registry hive defragmentation.

I also often use RevoUninstaller to cleanup after some uninstalls.

The warning from Mark and others on the risk involved with cleanup should be and is taken seriously.

I've used PC HealthBoost with success on a few slow PCs. I chose it because it does work as advertised and is in good standing with Microsoft. Microsoft, itself, also used to make a registry cleaner called regclean.exe.

Basically, uninstallers sometimes are poorly written, and that sometimes creates errors in your operating system that show popup errors or blue screens. Also, have you ever right-clicked the desktop and found it takes a long time because the context menu has extra menu options from a product (like Norton Antivirus) and one of those menu items is still there but the product has since been uninstalled? That delay is aggravating, and contributes to the slowness of the PC. Also, when a PC boots, it is looking for file paths mapped to keys where those files were deleted by an uninstaller but not the key.

Some may say it's only a marginal slowness, but I've seen it be a significant factor with nothing more than 4 poorly written uninstallers, where some of these programs may have created dozens of registry keys.

A word of caution, however -- not all registry cleaners are alike. You want one that can backup your registry first before making changes, and one that doesn't delete legitimate keys. Some of these companies are cagey, but I've been very pleased with PC HealthBoost.

I'm probably not a typical user, but I've never done so and never seen a need to do so. However, I do know that pretty much every program you've ever installed leaves some kind of junk lying around in your registry and/or hard drive, so it's still possible that such utilities might have a purpose.

CCleaner can find and remove hundred of invalid registry keys. If anything, I think cleaning the registry of invalid references can be good if you want to avoid having conflicts between software that is installed on the machine.

I agree, cleaning the registry risk vs reward is low, however tools to Registry defrag / compact the registry will increase performance. I use Registry Mechanic to just defrag and compact the Registry, not the registry cleaner options.

I believe it's better (effort and time wise) to just reinstall the whole system every 6 months or so, than spend every once in a while cleaning registry, "keeping the system clear" with anti virus, anti trojan, anti spyware, anti ... whatever you have left.

agree with everyone, I am not sure I would run a registry cleaner on the server. maybe manually remove some old entries to uninstalled software but make sure you have a backup of registry as others have noted.

the malware traces on my server were directly linked to the registry, the server is mainly used as a mail service and got hit with mail virus spamming out emails. I got the virus removed and the machine cleaned up. I want the cleaner mainly for the purpose of verifying that everything is as it should be in the regisity as that is were the virus orgin was.

I have been using ccleaner and glary utilities for a few years to clean my registry but i am now on the look for some software preferably 'free' that would do a deeper scan and clean. I have tried commodo registry cleaner, which did find some extra errors but it isn't as well established as ccleaner or glary and i know that a deep clean can be on the risky side, so i thought i would ask advice. Any information please....

Thanks for the reply but i am very surprised by your answer. the benefits from cleaning your registry after several installs and uninstalls is very significant and practiced by millions, even licensed anti virus companies partake. Also a registry defrag can double and triple your pc's performance and speed which is seriously hindered by inefficient uninstalls etc. I understand that some changes to the registry can be dangerous to the pc but some of these programs have been used for years by millions of people.

i am still surprised by this and don't really think 3 people versus millions of people matters. i myself have only learned what to do in pc maintenance and tweaking in the last 3 years but in that time i have my pc in a bad running state only to clean up 250 odd registry errors and defrag up to 16% of the registry which immediately boosted my performance back to fresh windows install speeds. Also i have advised some very uninformed friends to use a couple of registry cleaners and defragers as they were suffering badly on old pc's . they all think i am a god for fixing there pc's over the phone and leaving them with a regular clean up system to keep everything nice and shinny. i know that the temporary file cleaners do a lot of work on these machines towards performance but the registry defrag facility on glary utilities has instantly repaired all slow downs i have cause on my pc in the past. slow downs due to uninstalling several programs. Granted my pc has only 256 mb ram but i still have it booting in 5 secs and running windows explorer and my browser very efficiently.

you should just for an experiment, maybe on an old machine if you are so die hard on no registry cleaners, run just the registry defrag option on glary utilities and see what percent it defrags for u. then check your systems performance. The registry may be a very small part of your pc but all programs and activities on your pc go through your registry so it stands to reason that if it is corrupt and bloated with needless misdirecting entries it is going to slow down all actions on your pc. What your guys are saying, the ones you linked for me, is basically that the brain is only a small part of the body so why take care of it.

Removing even a thousand bad entries in the Registry will not change the read or write speed with any significant notice. The Registry can easily contain well over a million entries so the removal of a few entries will not change access time beyond scientific benchmark analysis.

The vast majority of the time a cleaner does no harm - but does no real good either. However in some rare cases it can cause functionality of a program or installer to not function correctly but most people don't even realize it was caused by the removal of values the cleaner thought were useless but were needed.

It is just not reasonable to believe that some programmer or team of programmers knows every single key and value in the Registry and if it's needed or not needed. Microsoft themselves pulled their own Registry cleaner and no longer make it available now for many years and they're the ones that created it on Windows.

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