NOTE: CAUTION! Working with your system registry is potentially VERY dangerous! Use extreme caution or have a professional perform the work for you.
As the ‘command control center’ or main database of your operating system your computer’s registry is vital to the performance of your system. You should make sure that you regularly repair your computer’s registry as it contains property settings, user profiles and hardware information and, in short, it tells your computer how to act, when to do it and what to do. The information stored in your registry is used to keep your Windows system running smoothly. These days the World Wide Web is rife with ways to enhance or ‘tweak’ your registry settings, the goal being to fix errors, remove unnecessary files and streamline the workings of your operating system but unless you know what you are doing the results could be disastrous. So how can you make sure you repair your computer’s registry with as little fuss as possible?
Downloading and installing or uninstalling software programs, hard drive crashes and viruses or spyware or even trying to fix the registry with little or no experience can all compromise your registry settings – changing its normal functioning and leading to a loss of performance quality. When this happens your computer will exhibit certain symptoms that may indicate that you need to take steps top repair your computer’s registry.
System crashes & Your Registry
How do you know if your registry is corrupt? You will know by the quality of your system’s performance. If your PC exhibits any of the symptoms mentioned below, you need to take steps to repair your computer’s registry.
Your computer may hang, become unresponsive or sluggish or simply ‘crash’ leading to variable data loss and a lot of inconvenience. Start up may take a long time or not start at all. If you shut your system down your hard drive may hum or beep at you. These may be signs of hacker activity, spyware or virus problems but it is worthwhile to check your registry to see whether it has been damaged.
How Can Spyware Damage Your Computer’s Registry?
Spyware are sneaky programs that install themselves on your system and track your web habits and personal information and transmit them back to the server that created them. They are not always easy to find and even harder to remove. Browser hijacks will replace your Internet Explorer home page with another and change your registry settings so that you can’t change or fix your settings.
How to Check Your Computer’s Registry for Errors
Registry errors build up over a period of time sometimes causing only minor problems until the day they reach overload and seriously damage your computer. To avoid a real computer disaster it is a good idea to perform regular checks to make sure you nip potential problems in the bud.
Using Regedit to Repair Your Computer’s Registry
* This is a tricky area of your operating system and houses all your computer’s registry settings including damaged or dangerous ones. A single erroneous entry into the registry could render your system unusable so you need to really know what you are doing when first you dare to tread in this sensitive zone.
Navigating Your Computer’s Registry
* Regedit works on a ‘tree system’. To see your computer’s registry click ‘START’ ‘RUN’ and type the word ‘regedit’ into the space provided. This will open the registry Editor. Click on a plus sign and more branches are opened and click on a minus sign and they are closed up. As you navigate through the registry make sure not to accidentally make any changes. The idea is to get a feel for this aspect of your operating system. Don’t make any changes yet.
Creating a System Restore Point
* Creating a system restore point will enable you to restore your entire system to a date on which it was running properly.
* If you have it turned off, you can activate it by single clicking ‘My computer’ with the right mouse button and choosing ‘PROPERTIES’ and un-checking the box marked ‘Turn off system restore on all drives’. System restore is now activated.
Making a Backup of Your Registry
* Always make a backup before you repair your computer’s registry. This means that if something goes wrong you will be able to restore your computers to its previous state. Make a backup of your registry by clicking ‘START’, ‘RUN’. Once you are inside Registry Editor, single-click ‘My Computer’ with the right mouse button and choose ‘EXPORT’. Call the file ‘backup’ and save it in the normal way.
* If you need to restore your computer’s registry later on you can do this by opening the registry editor and selecting ‘FILE’ then single-clicking the Import open. Find the backup registry file and click ‘OPEN’.
Now, assuming you know what is wrong and how to repair your computer’s registry, you can set about making the necessary changes.
For example, you may want to rename keys or values or delete the contents of values. You can change an icon on the desktop and the background colors from the registry too, though it is easier to do this from within the Windows control panel.
One really helpful thing you can do is to remove programs from the Add/Remove Programs folder. To do this, go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/
CurrentVersion/Uninstall.
Now you can highlight the key and press delete.
The specific make-up of your system and any infected or damaged files will determine exactly how to repair your computer’s registry but be warned – you can irreparably damage your computer if you don’t know what you are doing!
If you are a novice, read on for some advice on using software programs to fix your registry.
How to Repair Your Computer’s Registry Using Commercial Software
If the above information has left you with a firm resolve that you won’t be tampering with your registry manually then don’t worry there are a number of software solutions designed to analyze and repair your registry with a minimum of fuss.
(Remember that even if you use one of these programs you still need to follow the above steps to safeguard your computer).
You can use a cleaning utility to make changes to repair your computer’s registry. Each time you install and remove software or hardware on or off your system your registry changes and can grow very congested. Using a cleaning utility will remove any files that are outdated or corrupted.
Find a good quality registry cleaner and you won’t ever need to touch your registry again!
‘Reg cleaner’ will delete any old .dll files, and any outdated software entries. It has a backup facility to keep your system safe and it’s freeware so it won’t cost you a single cent.
Other software you can use, include ‘Clean Registry’, ‘EasyCleaner’, ‘OleClean’ and RegistryMechanic among others. A quick search online at Google will reveal what they are used for, how they work and how to obtain them.
Using tools like the ones above remove the uncertainty and likelihood of error that is part of the territory when you repair your registry manually and it is strongly recommended that you make use of this type of software to repair your computer’s registry. They certainly do take the guesswork out of the equation and with little more than a mouse-click you can return your PC to a clean bill of health! Good luck and happy fixing!