The Windows registry can get pretty messed up at times. Continually installing and removing software for example, is not good for the registry either.
Many programs do not remove themselves in a clean and complete way from the registry, leaving behind tons of useless registry keys. This can have a huge impact on the performance of your system. You should clean the registry every month with a registry cleaner.
There are lots of registry cleaners out there. There are cleaners that need to be paid for, but there are way more cleaners that are free and as a nice bonus they usually come with other system maintenance tools. In this article, I'll describe three free programs.
= RegSeeker =
RegSeeker is one of the better free registry cleaners, 'the perfect companion for your Windows registry' says developer Thibaud Djian. This program keeps your Windows registry nice and clean by removing obsolete or faulty registry keys. The program also comes with an Autoclean feature. Other features that come with RegSeeker: a program uninstaller, a start-up manager, a registry searching tool, some tweaks to apply, a feature to remove several histories (even the index.dat file), and a tool that searches your PC for duplicate files, bad shortcuts and more. Regseeker is free for personal use.
= Easy Cleaner =
This small but versatile program offers various features to keep your registry clean. It can also delete history and temporary files. EasyCleaner can search for duplicate files, and can also display some interesting info about your disk space usage. Easy Cleaner is free and very user-friendly. Extra features include a start-up manager, a feature that hunts down invalid shortcuts and removes them, and a program uninstaller. This program is multi-language too, with thirty languages to choose from.
= RegScrubXP =
RegScrubXP safely cleans junk out of the Windows XP registry thoroughly and fast. This is a simple but effective program, which is also available for free. All changes that were made by this program are fully restorable to its original condition. If RegScrubXP shows certain registry entries as a problem and you know for sure that they're okay, you can exclude the entries so that RegScrubXP will no longer mark them as a problem. Just like the two other programs I described, RegScrubXP also comes with a start-up manager, a feature to delete the history in Internet Explorer and a program uninstaller.
Now that you know of three good registry cleaners, it is time for you to choose one and give your Windows registry a vigorous washing. Your computer will thank you with better performance and more speed!