Probably the most overlooked computer maintenance tool is the registry cleaner. Not only is it a somewhat unknown entity, it also gets a bad rap from some people who either don’t know how to use it properly and just don’t have an understanding of how a Windows registry works.

In this article, I would like to make it clear that registry cleaners are an important tool that should be used periodically as a regular part of a computer’s upkeep. I will also make the case any corruption in the registry can hurt a computer’s speed and performance to a significant degree.

Registry Corruption is a Real Thing

Registry corruption exists and registry cleaners fix this corruption. I know this because I make a living repairing broken computers and I have seen corruption bring a computer to its knees. I have used registry cleaners many times to remove corruption and get these badly performing computers back up and speeding down the information highway again.

I seen more cases than I can count where a computer started to crash frequently or become very slow and when this happened it was caused by corruption in the registry. When this happens, there is no other viable plan of action other than to uses a registry cleaner so this computer will once again operate normally.

Registry Cleaners Are Necessary Today

Years ago you could get away without a registry cleaner. However, the newer operating systems, namely Windows XP and Vista corrupt easily, and because these OS’s are so huge, a little bit of corruption goes a long way toward deteriorating the performance of these systems.

As corruption builds up in the registry the computer’s speed will suffer, errors will become frequent and the blue screen of death often will occur. Being a computer technician myself, many customers have brought me their computers because they had slowed to the point they could not be used.

Why Not Clean the Registry

So what do you do when your computer is hardly functioning and you find you have corruption in the registry? Should you ignore it because some say registry cleaners are unnecessary? Not in my book! When a computer registry becomes corrupt, the only thing to do is scan it with a good registry cleaner. This, to me is common sense!

In any event, the first thing I do when I encounter a slow computer is make sure there is no spyware or viruses present. Then, once I know the PC is free of these things and it is still does not perform normally, a registry scan is the next logical step.

If this scan finds little, there is nothing you can do, but if you find a lot of corruption and it is likely you will, bite the bullet and purchase the cleaner and clean the corruption out. Reputable registry cleaners come with a money back guarantees. From my experience, I usually find at this point, the computer will return to normal performance.