Guidelines For Working With The Windows Registry

Your Windows operating system is dependent on the Windows registry because it contains vital information that is required by your software and hardware to carry out various operations. The registry also contains information on how the system should appear and what should be available to different user accounts on the system.

Configuration data is stored in the form of keys and their values in a hierarchical structure. Registry problems start arising when the registry database gets filled up with too many unwanted, obsolete, orphan, and empty registry keys. A bloated registry gets damaged and fragmented easily. As a result, data access from your registry slows down and you may also start receiving registry errors.

To prevent these issues, there a few simple guidelines that you need to follow while working on your Windows computer.

Backup your Registry

The registry works constantly the entire time your PC is operational. This is the reason why there can be several things that may cause irreversible damage to it and prevent your PC from working normally. To avoid this situation, it is important that you make regular registry backups. When you do this, you can easily restore your registry from the last backup of the working registry. There are many ways in which a registry backup can be made. Let us take a look at some of the most common ways:

- You can use the File > Export command of the Registry Editor tool to export and save registry backup in a .reg file.
- Your Windows makes automatic registry backups daily, when the system restore point is created by the System Restore Vista tool. You can use this tool to make manual restore points before making any major changes to your computer.
- You can opt to use a Windows registry cleaner tool to easily create backups in just a few mouse clicks.

Tweak the Registry Entries

By default, there are several entries in the registry that are configured for a base performance. You can change these settings to speed up various processes, such as display time of menus and modify the prefetch settings. Information about registry tweaks is available on various Windows help sites. So, if you want to speed up your computer, you can search for and implement the tweaks that you can use. However, before making any changes, remember to make a registry backup.

Scan and Clean the Registry

To ensure that your registry stays healthy and error free, it is important that you keep it free from unwarranted entries. To do this, you need to regularly scan and clean the registry. A registry cleaner Vista or XP tool can be used to easily perform these tasks. These tools are designed to perform a thorough and deep scan of the registry database and to weed out all unwanted errors from it. You can also use a good registry tool to defrag the registry. Defragging helps in speeding up the registry by reindexing and compressing its files. And, finally as we have already discussed earlier, these tools can be used to perform easy registry backup and restore.