How to fix the windows registry

What are the signs of a registry problem?
One of the most common and hard-to-fix causes of a computer not functioning correctly is if there’s a problem with its registry. Symptoms of registry problems are fairly typical computer problems: slow loading times, constant freezing, instability and crashing.

What is the Registry?
Basically, the registry is something that every Windows system has and contains information on all of your software settings and configurations. The registry is central to your computer’s performance so if there’s something wrong with the registry, chances are you computer won’t function correctly. Unfortunately, the registry is extremely delicate; if you delete one of the countless .dat or .ini files contained within the countless registry subfolders, the entire system can be irrevocably ruined. Even if you haven’t tampered with the registry subfolders directly, it doesn’t mean that they haven’t been corrupted indirectly. Every time you download, install or install a program, an entry (often an unnecessary entry) will be entered into the registry; over time this useless entries compound, causing the system to get clogged up with them, hence making it run a slower and less smoothly.

Paths to fixing the registry

The manual way (i.e. the hard way)
Since the registry is so fragile, fixing it manually is generally a tasked reserved for professionals, and even they view it as a measure of last resort. You need a wealth of technical expertise to even make an attempt at this so I won’t canvass it here and even if I did, it still would not be a good idea to try it.

The easy (and recommended) way
Even though the registry is central to computer performance and so fragile, damage to it is, fortunately enough, easily reversible. There is a lot of reputable software out there (known as ‘registry cleaners’) that are built specifically for this purpose; it’s simply a matter of loading the software and letting it do its thing. Many find that a registry clean with a registry cleaner restores their computer to full functionality, even computers that are seemingly useless because of the abundance of registry errors. In the interest of maintaining functionality in the long run, many registry cleaners offer periodic registry cleaner so that the whole process is completely automated.