What is a registry cleaner?
A registry cleaner is a type of software program that is designed to remove unwanted, outdated and redundant information from the Windows registry. This data usually comprises data left-behind by incorrectly uninstalled software, information that is no longer required, and entries added by malware programs in order to carry out malicious activities on your PC. When you use a registry cleaner tool to fix registry problems, the tool uses complex algorithms to perform a thorough scan to identify these unwanted entries and remove them. Basically, in short: it's a way to get rid of junk that is clogging up your computer.
Benefits of
Using Registry Cleaners
The popularity of registry cleaners is governed by the manifold benefits offered by them. Let's go through a few of them:
Ease-of-Use
One of the most obvious (and important) features of a good registry
cleaner tool is that it is developed to cater both to non-technical and
advanced users. Any good tool usually contains a simple interface that you
can easily understand and use. Most of the registry maintenance tasks can be
done in simple mouse clicks and you don’t need to get into the
technicalities of the complex registry structure. Good registry tools offer
both manual and automatic registry cleanup tasks.
The automatic method is good for non-technical users who want their registry to perform all registry maintenance tasks on its own. Most people are going to want to go with this - it's basically click it, let the thing run, and trust it to do its thing. However, if you are an advanced user and you want see what is being fixed and if you want to choose what to and what not to fix, you can opt for the manual cleanup method. When you choose this method, the registry cleaner scans your registry and displays all the problems detected on the screen. You can then manually select the entries you want to fix and the entries you want to retain.
If you are looking to fix a particular type of problem, such as performing a DLL repair or ActiveX/COM components repair, you can easily do so by selecting your choice before starting the scan.
Complete Program Removal
When you install a new software program on your PC, several entries are
added to the registry to enable the software to function. Now if you choose
to uninstall this software, ideally all these entries should be removed.
However, this rarely happens. More often than not, entries get left behind
and the resultant is a filled up cluttered registry. The result is that most
people have a bunk of extra stuff in their registry, potentially slowing
down their computer. Registry cleanup with the help of a registry tool
enables you to identify and remove these entries and ensure complete program
removal.
Complete Malware Cleanup
Malware programs, especially spyware, are known to add embedded entries
in the Windows registry that are practically non-removable manually. These
entries are used by spyware programs to recreate and reinstall on your PC
soon after you remove them.
When you use an advanced registry tool, it uses complex algorithms to
identify these malicious entries and delete them to ensure that all malware
is completely removed from your PC.
Registry Defragmentation
Due to increase in the number of entries, the registry files tend to get
fragmented. A fragmented registry takes much longer to retrieve and provide
data to software and thus slows down your PC. To fix this condition it is
always good to opt for a registry tool that provides a registry
defragmentation feature. There are two main benefits of defragging your
registry. First, the entire registry is reindexed and made contiguous.
Second, the registry is compressed. This is done by eliminating any unwanted
empty registry entries. These entries are the place holder keys of the
program you uninstall from the PC.
After the registry is defragmented, the data access speed enhances, which
results in speeding up the performance of your system.
Easy Backup and Restore Features
Because the registry is an essential component of any Windows computer,
it needs to be handled with care. One thing that you need to do is to ensure
that you regularly back up the registry. Having a backup makes it easy for
you to restore the registry in case an irrecoverable problem occurs.
A good registry tool contains options to enable you to not only make full
backups but also to back up a selected portion of the registry. The main
benefit of making a backup of a part of the registry is that when you
restore it, only changes to these particular portions are reverted. The
remaining registry stays as it is.
A good registry tool also makes an automatic registry backup before any
changes are done to the registry by the tool. This way, if any thing goes
wrong with your repair process, you can easily restore from the backup taken
earlier to restore any changes made to it.
Although there are other methods to back up the registry, registry
cleaner tools are preferred because they are quite easy to use and even
someone with very little know how about computers can use them to maintain
regular registry backups.
Additional System Management Tools
As if fixing problems with your registry wasn't enough, some tools will
go a step further and provide additional features that help you perform a
few additional PC maintenance tasks. Whenever you're buying one, you'll want
to see if it has any of these extra "freebies" that come with it. Some of
these features are listed below:
Startup Programs
Manager: Enables you to disable the programs you don’t want to load at
system startup and frees up system resources used by them.
Browser Help
Object Manager (BHO): BHOs are add-on software plugged in to your Web
browser to add additional functionalities to it. The most common BHOs are
browser toolbars, such as Google Toolbar and Yahoo toolbar. At times, you
may have BHOs you don’t use and then there are some BHOs that are added by
malware programs - you can get rid of these with the BHO manager feature
included in some advanced registry tools.
Privacy Manager:
When you work on your PC, you leave behind tracks of the tasks you have done. Privacy manager helps remove these tracks and helps you to secure your sensitive data.
There are several registry tools available on the Internet that you can
choose from. As a vigilant user, you'll need to opt for a tool that is
compatible with your operating system and contains features you need. It is
also recommended that you go through users and expert reviews to ensure that
the tool you are choosing is legitimate and not a malware disguised as a
registry cleaner tool.
Return to the Registry Cleaners Guide