Should You Clean Your Registry?
Monday, August 25th, 2008Is it necessary to clean your registry? My answer is yes, I clean my computers registry at least once a week. Why so often? I like to know what programs have added what to my registry and incremental cleaning means that instead of fixing 100 errors at a time I only fix 5. This means there is much less chance of a serious error occurring.
Almost every single program installed on your machine will add entries to the Windows registry. If you are a user that gets by using a minimal install, not installing and uninstalling programs regularly, then possibly it is not necessary to clean your registry very often or even at all. However, if you are like me, I like to frequently try new programs so I am installing, testing and uninstalling programs on a weekly basis. Every single program adds registry entries. It is nice to think that uninstallers remove ALL references in the registry but in reality most uninstalls will leave a few entries in the registry. Carry on like this for a few months and then do a registry scan and you will be shocked, most likely there will be many, many inccorrect and invalid references in the registry hence the need to do regular cleans.
There can be issues with registry cleaning however. In my experience you get 3 kinds of registry cleaner :
1 - The AVERAGE cleaner. This program will find ’some’ of the problems in the registry and fix them. If you use a better cleaner afterwards you will still find errors.
2 - The AGGRESSIVE cleaner. This is the worst of the 3. It cleans the errors AND it cleans healthy references. An aggressive registry cleaner is dangerous and should NOT be used. They appear to be doing an amazing job, removing much more than other programs. However, in the long run this leads to errors - programs crashing, not starting and others. Avoid an aggressive registry cleaner at all costs. I have had an experience, after NOT backing-up my registry (NOT RECOMMENDED) and using an aggressive cleaner, that a full re-install had to be done.
3 - A GOOD cleaner. This should be installed on your machine. A GOOD cleaner finds and fixes most, if not all, registry errors and will help maintain your registry in peak condition.
Please remember (something I have forgotten before) to back-up your registry before doing any kind of cleaning. Most cleaners will offer this function. This is a very important point to remember before doing ANY registry clean.
If you are looking for a registry cleaner we recommend RegCure. Get a FREE download and scan HERE.
