What Is The Registry?
Think of your registry as a huge database that holds the complete inventory and location of every file, folder, program and process that resides on your computer. 

Because this information is used to tell programs how to run and locate the files needed to perform a certain task (kind of like an huge instruction booklet), when files or programs are added to or removed from your PC, the registry is modified to make note of these changes.

Overtime the registry becomes bloated and disorganized because of these changes leading to poor PC performance.

For a little more background, the registry is a set of files residing on your PC.  Inside these files are stored all of the settings that make your programs run and perform their functions and allow for Windows to operate correctly. 

For even more in depth (and very technical) information about the registry you can checkout Wikipedia and Microsoft.

You cannot access the files directly to make any changes or remove any outdated or unnecessary entries.  To do this you must use a Windows system utility called RegEdit.

Using this utility however, requires a lot of technical expertise and in depth knowledge about not only the Windows operating system but the programs running on your PC.  Without the correct know how you can do severe damage to your computer pretty quickly.

I have put together a short demonstration video, in order to give you an idea of what it is like to fire up and use the Registry Editor and the kind of cryptic information the registry contains. 

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

 As you can see the registry is not something you want to mess around with and is all the more reason to use a registry cleaner to quickly and efficiently perform registry optimization in just a couple minutes.

The result is a fast, optimized registry that keeps your computer running properly. Without such tune ups your computer can become sluggish, full of error messages or experience frequent system crashes. As an example of this in action, I put together a demonstration video that shows how the simple act of uninstalling

software (even if you use the add/remove programs control panel) still leaves behind traces of itself on your computer.

The video below shows the entire process from scanning the system before the programs are removed, uninstalling the programs and then performing another registry scan to show what is left behind even though the programs are now technically “uninstalled”

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

As this video helps demonstrate, manually checking and cleaning up your registry is a very time consuming process that requires a lot of technical expertise.  Just, imagine having to remove all of these orphan entries in your registry manually!

Repair and maintenance of the registry is an extremely complex task, for only the most technically inclined.

With the proper software, however, registry repair becomes a relatively stress free task because it automates an extremely complex and time consuming task.  The result is improvement in your PC's performance without the expensive support and maintenance bills or the need for technical expertise.

That’s nice and all but that requires you to put a lot of faith in a piece of software to not mess up your computer and make any existing problems worse.

So how can you trust the recommendations of these types of programs to not delete something you need or report problems you don’t actually have?

There are a couple precautions you can take to ensure you are using a reliable registry cleaner but I’m not sure they are very practical and certainly not foolproof.  You’ve been warned :-) but here goes.
 

1.       The first step you can take is to download several different registry cleaners and see how their results compare to each other.   Many companies offer a free trial that you can use to scan your system for errors.  By using 3-4 different programs and comparing the results to each other you should see some overlap between programs.  If one program has results completely different than the others you would probably want to stay way from that registry cleaner. 
 

2.       Option number 2 is more a method to confirm that a scan result actually exists and is not just a made up recommendation to scare you into purchasing the software.

You can run a scan, and then use Regedit to locate the entries in your registry to confirm it actually exists.

Here is a video where I did exactly this but I think you will quickly see that this would be a pretty tedious and inefficient use of your time.

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

As you can see, it is indeed pretty difficult to know with 100% certainty that what you are deleting should be or can be deleted.  That is why I prefer to take advantage of the backup and data protection methods used by many registry cleaners.  I discuss this in full detail in the next section.

From testing and experimenting with registry cleaner software, I can say that it is very easy in most cases to restore your computer back to normal should the need arise.  Usually, it is just a matter of clicking a couple buttons and hitting “ok”

Here is a video that demonstrates a three level layer of protection for ensuring you are protected from most problems that could arise.  The 4 levels of data backup protection include:
 

1. Full extensive back up of your registry can be performed any time.  This makes a complete back up of your registry not just a backup of the the changes allowing you to revert back to a previous version of your registry should the need arise.
    

2. Move files to a "holding" area (quarantine) where you can easily recover files so that you can make sure the changes do not cause trouble.
    

3. Backups are automatically created and accessible from within the program once you decide to delete the files from your system and can be easily recovered and fully restored.
    

4. Ability to create a system restore point that is compatible with Windows XP system restore allowing you to roll back you system to it's previous state if any trouble should arise..

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

Video:  Full Registry Backup Feature

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

One final note, when evaluating registry repair software, make sure the backup feature kicks in automatically when deleting registry entries instead of requiring you to create backups manually.  This will ensure you have a backup even if you forget to create one.

In my personal testing this is one of the hardest things to actually prove or show but I have tried my best to give you some real testing data compiled using PC performance benchmarking software that basically tests a computer's performance on many different levels.

One thing that needs to be pointed out before I dive into the examples is that a registry cleaner will not magically turn your PC into a new machine

What it can do is help the software using these things work more efficiently that can lead to some performance gains.

For the performance testing, I used PerformanceTest by Passmark Software to help measure the performance differences before and after a registry cleaning. 

The videos below demonstrate PC performance before the registry is cleaned and after the registry is cleaned. I did not record audio in these videos as it might have impacted the performance tests. 

 

Video:  Before cleaning the registry:

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

Video: After Cleaning Registry:

Click Here To Play Movie

TIP: If the links don't open when you click on them, try holding down the control (Ctrl) key as you click.

Based on the results shown in the videos there was a 14.4% overall performance increase from using the registry cleaner. 

This data at least provides some evidence that a registry cleaner can improve your system performance, just how much will no doubt be different for each system and how noticeable this difference will be is hard to say.

Whew!  A lot to digest. I'm happy you made it this far (you didn’t just scroll down here did you :-)  ?

Hopefully this article has been helpful to you and shed a little more light on what exactly registry cleaners can do.

No matter how much information and examples you give, it’s human nature to want “the best” of something and that is no different when looking for a registry cleaner.

There are a lot of registry repair programs out there and honestly most of them perform many of the same tasks and functions.  All I can do is recommend the software I personally use and have the most first hand experience with.

When it comes to a registry cleaner, I put complete trust and faith in Max Secure Software and their Max Registry Cleaner. For the past 13 months I have used the software with no problems. 

Not only do you have numerous ways to backup your data, but there is also a great feature that allows you to send their support team a copy of your scan results.

What this means is that if you are really unsure about deleting something, you can click a button from within the software which allows you to write a brief note expressing your concerns or ask a question while automatically sending a copy of your scan results to their tech team for them to analyze personally and get back with you. 

I don’t know, for me personally for them to have something like this in their software shows a certain degree of confidence  that their product works as advertised.

Feel free to download Max Registry Cleaner and scan your computer by clicking on the link below.  If you still have questions, you can learn more from their site directly and they also happen to offer live chat on their site so you can ask them any questions you may have.  Cool stuff!

Click Here To Download Max Registry Cleaner

Compatible with Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98

( Click here to visit Max Registry Cleaner Site )