Cleaning Your Registry - The Simple Tips

Fiddling with your Windows registry without the technical know-how can prove harmful to your PC. However, these tips should prove useful:

The ultimate insurance against registry mishaps or any other computer disaster is to have an up-to-date back up. Doing so, you could restore your PC integrity to its condition before the tinkering.

When using a registry cleaner, you need to pay keen attention to details. It's different with wizards which only ask you to click one 'next' button after another. This is a very crucial operation and could mean life or death for your computer. Browser through all the instructions that come with your registry cleaner.

Make use of the Emergency Recovery Utility NT (ERUNT) to back up the registry before starting the cleaning process. There are registry cleaners that automatically back up any changes that are being made so you just skip this. If you want to take extra precautionary measure, this would not hurt.

Be sure that there are no other applications running when you start scanning. Exit the customary tools that are usually running in the system tray. Running applications are continuously making registry changes, thus, making the work of the registry cleaner very intricate.

The program will allow you to remove, or in some cases, repair some errors in the registry once the scanning is done. Set the registry cleaner to remove errors only at the level wherein things remain safe and procedures are minimally intrusive if there is an option available. Even with this setting, the program might still find a thousand or two entries that need to be deleted. There's no such thing as an automatic cleaning.

Going over all the errors that need to be removed or repaired is a painstaking procedure. Choose only the entries that ring a bell. For files that you are unsure, just let them be. Observe your PC for the next day or two and if it is still running smoothly, try scanning again. This time, choose the more aggressive options. Unless you have technical know-how, be careful to examine entries marked caution. Do not believe the registry cleaner's assurance of restoring deleted registry entries. Restoration may not be possible if the deleted entry is essential for the system to boot.

If some problems arise such as a program that doesn't launch, there is no cause for alarm. Use the registry cleaner's restore feature. Use the ERUNT to restore the registry if the other feature won't fix it.