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The Windows registry. A lot of my retail customers seem to think that it's something viral, simply because of the number of bogus alerts certain websites pop up about needing to "clean it now." So what is the registry, and what free software is best to clean it?

The Windows registry is a complete catalog of all the hardware, software, and related settings on your pc. Tons of information resides in it, from your Windows Product Key, applications that run at startup, to the registration information for your other programs. It's at the core of your Windows XP installation, and definitely not something to be tuning up with disreputable software. A damaged registry file can very easily lead to a Windows reinstallation or even having to reinstall all your drivers or software.

Ever seen that annoying Windows XP blue screen of death with a message about \system32\config\? That means a damaged registry, and it's no fun for an average user to deal with.

That's why it's really important to make sure that you're using a piece of software that has good community support and is very easy to use and understand. When I need to tune a user's registry, there's one program I can always depend on: the totally free CCleaner.

CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com), while most commonly used to remove temp files, cookies, and other hard drive space-wasters, also comes with a built in registry tune-up feature. Perhaps the most important part of it's registry function is that it prompts you to back up BEFORE making any changes and then creates the backup file for you. That way if your CCleaner tune-up has any undesired side effects, you can launch CCleaner again and use it to restore and undo your changes.

What happens when CCleaner cleans your registry? Think of your registry as a large tree; there are main branches (hives), little branches that shoot off those (keys), and then the leaves (values). It makes sense, then, that when you install a new piece of software you end up with a lot of new "crud" in your registry - since each new key brings with it several new values. CCleaner seeks out old, leftover keys and values from software that is no longer installed and trims them out of your registry. On an average scan, I usually find 200 to 300 unneeded registry objects with CCleaner.

The best part is that I've never (not once) allowed CCleaner to remove everything it found from the registry and had it damage the Windows installation. If you try out a lot of software, CCleaner is an invaluable tool - it'll hunt down and remove old installers, log files, temp files, and anything else that shouldn't be left when you're done installing or uninstalling a program.

It's a great application to clean up - and it'll do much more than just registries!

Learn more about this author, Lee Mathews.
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