cryptic error messages are something that pretty much everyone has had to
deal with at some point from the console
gamer suffering the Xbox 360's red ring
of death to Michael Bolton from Office Space wondering what in the world PC
load letter actually means but if you're
a Windows user you've probably encountered messages telling you that
there's a problem with the registry as well as those Shady banner ads and TV
commercials telling you to buy a registry cleaning utility of some sort
so what exactly is this mysterious registry why can issues with it cause
problems for your PC and does it really need to be cleaned periodically like
some kind of digital kitty litter box
well unlike your cat's toilet the registry isn't really a Dumping Ground
it's actually a database on your hard drive that stores important settings for
both Windows and other programs you have installed you see back in the early days
of Windows both the OS itself and other
programs relied on small text files called inis to Store settings but
Microsoft developed the registry as a more robust solution that can store many
more settings than an individual inii help different pieces of software
communicate with each other more easily keep track of settings for multiple
users on the same machine and use a hierarchical structure to keep things
organized that structure is actually easy to view for yourself just by typing
reg edit into the Run window which launches a program called registry
editor from there you'll see a massive array of folder like structures called
registry keys which contain a myriad of
settings and despite the warnings from Microsoft that editing the registry can
cause serious damage to your computer it can actually be a very powerful way to
customize Windows so long as you don't go around messing with things that you
are unsure of a quick web search will
yield all sorts of registry tweaks for
both Windows and other programs that you might find useful things like
customizing the taskbar or rightclick context menu changing the font in the
command prompt window changing the delay when you Mouse over something between
when the information pops up stopping Windows update from constantly interrup
what you're doing and even adding your own logo to the system window in control
panel these are just a few ways that you can make Windows behave the way you want
with registry hacks simple registry adjustments are also often good ways to
fix common PC problems in fact many hot
fixes from Microsoft come in the form of registry entries that you can merge into
your own registry with a simple double click but although the registry lets you
tweak plenty of things that you just can't do from a settings menu it does
make moving a program from one PC to
another a total pain due to just how many settings it stores and how
scattered they can get throughout the registry and it can indeed cause issues
with Windows if it gets corrupted
however with that said while certain errors in the registry can cause
problems not even with Windows even but even with specific programs you should
be wary of some of those registry cleaning programs that try to convince
you your registry needs to be regularly cleaned and that doing so will give you
faster performance because the truth of the matter is that often times the
errors that these sorts of programs fix are just entries from uninstalled
programs that kind of sit in the registry and don't really do much of
anything so the chances that any individual registry error is actually
slowing down your computer are pretty
darn low however if you're actually getting registry related error messages
or have a piece of malware on your computer that may have put things into
the registry to make it harder to remove running a reputable cleaner program may
not be a bad idea just make sure it's a trustworthy popular utility and not some
random thing that you downloaded after clicking a tacky in-your-face
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