Registry errors are behind many computer problems. As your PC gets older, the registry of your Windows system keeps getting filled up with many unwanted, outdated, incorrect and invalid entries. Accumulation of this unnecessary information causes unwarranted registry growth, which eventually corrupts and fragments it. This makes the registry unstable, deteriorates data access time and slows down your PC. Additionally, registry errors also generate many computer errors related to device drivers, DLLs, EXEs, programs and other components on your system. To prevent these problems and improve your PC’s performance you need to use a registry cleaner tool.

To meet the increasing demand to perform registry maintenance, there are a large number of third-party freeware and shareware Windows registry cleaner tools available on the Internet today. You can go through the features and user reviews of these tools and select a Windows registry cleaner tool that meets your requirements and is compatible with your operating system.

After you have downloaded and installed a registry cleaner tool, you can use the options available in this tool to optimize your registry and speed up your PC. Listed below are the steps that you need to perform in order to optimize your registry using your registry cleaner tool.

1. 1. Backup the Registry

Due to its importance in running your system, you must create a backup of your registry before making any changes to it. Almost all registry cleaner tools include a registry Backup and Restore option. Therefore, before starting your registry clean process, create a backup of the entire registry.

In case your registry clean process fails, or by chance you remove some of the required registry entries, you can easily restore the registry from its backup and fix the problem.

1. 1. Scan the Registry

After you have backed up the registry, use the Scan option of your registry cleaner tool to scan registry for errors. Many registry cleaner tools enable you to customize your search and allow you to search only for specific types of errors. This feature is useful when you want to fix a particular error on your system.

When you hit the Scan option, your registry cleaner tool will perform a deep and thorough scan of the registry and display all incorrect, invalid, and obsolete information on the screen.

1. 1. Repair registry errors

A good registry cleaner tool will provide you with two options to fix registry errors. The first option will enable you to select the Repair option and allow your registry tool to handle the entire repair process. The second option is handier for more experienced users as it allows you to scan through the results and choose the errors that you want to repair. This is a useful option because it considerably reduces the chances of errors. Many registry cleaner tools display categorized results that make the task of fixing registry errors quite simple for you.

1. 1. Defrag the Registry

After you have cleaned the registry, you must defrag it to make the registry files contiguous. This is important because when the size of your registry increases it fragments the registry and increases the data access time. Additionally, many times, when registry entries are removed they leave behind their place holders or empty registry keys within the registry—this may occur even when you remove erroneous registry keys using your registry cleaner tool. Defragging enables you to compress the registry, reindex its files and remove empty registry keys and as a result, speeds up your PC.

Regularly cleaning the registry will enable you to maintain a high performance PC for a long time. Therefore, to ensure that your registry is scanned and repaired periodically, you must configure the Schedule option of your registry cleaner tool to perform registry repair at regular periods.