How to Fix the Windows Registry
Now that we’ve briefly discussed how the Windows Registry works, let’s discuss why the Windows Registry breaks, and how we can go about fixing it.
As we mentioned previously, the Windows Registry is the giant storehouse of information for all the different software applications (like Word, or Internet Explorer) that run on your computer. When each of these different pieces of software is installed on your computer, it adds an entry to the registry. This is so the software can keep track of seperate settings (your homepage, for example) and also to let Windows know that a new piece of software has been installed.
The trouble starts when the piece of software is deleted, uninstalled, or has a fatal error of some sort. Then, entries which existed previously in the Registry no longer exist, and the Registry is essentially corrupted.
The difficult way to fix this is to run RegEdit.exe from the command line - something Microsoft itself doesn’t even recommend. If you’re still interested, see this article at the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
The more relatively easy way to fix the registry is to download a registry cleaner. We will review Registry Cleaners in a separate post.
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