Why Using a Registry Cleaner Won't Speed Up Your PC or Fix Crashes

What You Said: Have Registry Cleaners Helped Your Computer. Ever? http://www.howtogeek.com/57637/what-you-saidhave-registry-cleaners-helped-yo ur-computer-ever/ What You Said: Have Registry Cleaners Helped Your Computer. Ever? Earlier this week we asked you to share your experiences with Windows registry cleaning applications. You responded with hundreds of… [Read Article referred to above.] No legitimate benchmarks showing a performance increase as a result of a registry cleaner have ever been released. If a registry cleaner offered boosted performance, we would have some benchmarks by now. It’s anecdotal evidence, but the majority of our readers didn’t find that registry cleaners helped improve their performance on modern computers, either. In Some Rare Cases. Now, it’s theoretically possible that a registry cleaner could help in some rare cases. For example, if a program left behind an invalid context menu entry in your registry, it’s possible that your context menu would take noticeably longer to appear in Windows Explorer when you right-clicked on something. It’s also possible that a registry cleaner would notice and remove this entry for you, solving the problem. In another case, you might have a ten-year-old computer with a very small amount of RAM and a Windows installation that’s seen thousands of programs installed and uninstalled over the case of a decade. A registry cleaner might theoretically help shrink the size of the registry enough to make the computer perform faster. Such situations are bound to be extremely rare. There’s no point in running a registry cleaner constantly. Many registry cleaner companies recommend running their cleaner once a week. Such problems would be better dealt with by solving them when you encounter them. It’s likely that the average registry cleaner would cause many more problems than it fixes if it were run on a regular basis. And even if it’s completely harmless, it’s a waste of your time. So If a Registry Cleaner Won’t Speed Things Up, What Will? We’ve already covered why PCs slow down over time and shown you how to prevent this from happening. (Notice the article posted Wednesday October 2nd, in Dan’s Tips.) Rather than run a registry cleaner, you should just be careful about what you install in the first place. Even if you need to uninstall something later, a few registry entries , or even a lot of registry entries – won’t cause a slow down. If your computer is hideously slow or crashing frequently, you likely have more problems than a full registry and you’re probably better off reinstalling Windows or refreshing your PC. RELATED ARTICLES HTG Explains: Do You Really Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows? http://www.howtogeek.com/168528/htg-explains-do-you-really-need-to-regularly -reinstall-windows/ For many people, Windows seems to slow down over time. Quite a few people fix this by regularly reinstalling Windows…. [Read Article] Beginner Geek: How to Reinstall Windows on Your Computer http://www.howtogeek.com/133254/beginner-geek-how-to-reinstall-windows-on-yo ur-computer/ Reinstalling Windows is one of the easiest ways to fix software problems on your computer, whether it’s running slow or… [Read Article] We didn’t dwell on this part too much, but registry cleaners can also cause damage. There are so many different registry entries that could be present from so many different software programs that the average registry cleaner put together by a less-than-reputable software company can’t possibly account for them all. If a registry cleaner tried to be too aggressive so it could clean up as many “errors” as possible, it could easily remove errors that were necessary for an installed program, causing problems. In summary, forget about registry cleaners and get on with your life. As long as you take basic care of your Windows computer, you don’t have to worry about your registry.]]>