If you’re going to use a registry cleaner, which one should you use? Since you can’t tell whether your situation is going to be one of those “mostly harmless” scenarios or a total disaster, it’s critical that you back up properly before you begin. They may not do any good, but reputable ones aren’t going to harm your system unless there’s some other kind of underlying problem. There are those who disagree with my position.Īnd, to be honest, while there are horror stories, most of the time cleaners don’t do any damage. That way, if anything goes wrong - including a system restore failure - you can safely restore your machine to a point in time before the damage was done. I prefer, however, to take a full system image backup. This is one of the few times I’ll consider using system restore, as it is nothing more than a glorified registry backup. Back up firstīefore you run any cleaner, back up first.

While it might help, it’s not likely to help much.

To resolve Windows or application crashes, but only if nothing else has helped.

To attempt to speed up a very slow Windows machine, but only if nothing else has helped.

In my opinion, registry cleaning is appropriate in only two cases: I’ve even heard from individuals who’ve had to completely reinstall Windows after running a registry cleaner that did much more harm than good. I do get reports of cleaners making things worse. The problem is, these types of situations rarely respond to cleaning they often require an application-specific or Windows-specific solution. Many people reach for a registry cleaner when an application is having problems or Windows is misbehaving. In my experience, most computers don’t benefit substantially, if at all, from a registry cleaning.

Here’s one of the reasons I feel this way so strongly: My registry scanner reported hundreds of errors! How do I know which to fix? Registry cleaner risks

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