Should you download registry cleaner software?
You may have noticed that when you buy a new computer, its performance allows it to rip along at a brisk pace, booting quickly and starting applications promptly. If your PC is brand new, it is probable that you don’t need a registry cleaner download. However, with use, your system seems to slow down, incrementally, taking longer for software to load and suffering from more frequent system crashes and freezes.
These changes are very real and reflect gradual, but significant, modification of the PC’s registry. If you download a registry cleaner, it will keep your registry optimized. The “registry” is, in computing terms, an oddly recent innovation, which, although not integral for the operation of a computer in principal, in practice does greatly facilitate its performance. Essentially it’s a single central directory which stores operating system settings and options for all hardware and software installed. As a matter of chronology, although implemented in Windows 3.11, Microsoft only started to actively promote its use with Windows 95 onwards.
The registry developed to replace the proliferation of configuration files, for various Windows applications, which were distributed in various parts of the computer’s hard drive. As the PC became more powerful, running a more abundant and richer variety of applications, a centralized archive of the configuration settings, of these programs, became an effective mechanism improving the PC’s performance by reducing time spent searching for the relevant files, and reducing the likelihood of conflicts between different settings.
However elegant (and comparatively simple) a single centralized database of system settings might be over the alternative of a distributed selection of isolated configuration files, the very centrality the Windows registry created corresponding difficulties. The registry has become a single archive upon which all aspects of the computer’s operation rely. Although only a data archive, by concentrating what was otherwise important, but not necessarily essential, information, in a single file structure, its corruption can quite readily cause total catastrophic failure of the PC.
Similarly, the Windows registry has created something of a security liability since malicious, or merely poorly designed, code simply needs to access one location to modify the PC’s security settings. There is also an issue associated with uninstalling software, in that applications that are uninstalled incorrectly, or whose uninstall application is poorly designed, may not remove all instances of the program from the registry, and hence the registry generally becomes longer and more complicated, and correspondingly slower to access, over time.
But, possibly, the major limitation to the registry is its very obscurity. Although integral for the operation of every user’s machine, and although it may have a finger in many of the system problems that people face on their computers, it is largely inscrutable to anyone less than an absolute expert. And, as touched on, the consequences of making an error when manually modifying the registry could be terminal for the computer. All-in-all, therefore, the registry could be characterized as a no-go area for almost all computer users.
Faced with such a challenge, rather than risk manually editing their registry, most users will turn to registry cleaner software to fix registry errors and fragmentation, to deliver improved performance, increase system stability and tighten security. These utilities can tune up and streamline the PC’s registry to enhance computing experience and eliminate related system seizures and crashes.
But the decision as to which software to use or buy must not be taken lightly and skimping on a registry cleaner utility might be a false economy. A poorly designed free application could end up by removing critical registry entries and information that will damage the system and jeopardize its stable operation. Users may then also find that this same cheap application doesn’t come with access to a technical support team which they can contact for help. This would then mean spending more money on costly computer repairs and risking losing data (which it may not be able to recover).
On the other hand the advantage of good registry repair applications is that they are specialized and thoroughly tested applications specifically designed to optimize performance. A reputable registry cleaner will log all the registry repairs implemented and will even store a backup of the previous registry settings.
Put simply, the Windows registry is too important for the safe, secure and stable performance of your PC, to be ignored, yet correspondingly it is too sensitive to be edited by someone (or something) without the appropriate skills. The only realistic option for most PC users, for delivering regular registry maintenance, is to download a registry cleaner application produced by a reputable software firm.
