Welcome to the second iteration of Using CCleaner. In this section, I will explain how to use the Registry tab inside of CCleaner. This section will be much more sparse than the previous section because a lot of the information is overly technical. I encourage anyone truly concerned about what CCleaner is doing under the hood to check our their documentation which I will link to below.
If you’ve never heard of CCleaner, it is a system optimization tool developed by Piriform. The tool is absolutely free and offers a wide-selection of Windows cleaning and optimization options. You can grab CCleaner from Piriform’s website: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download
CCleaner - Registry Tab
In this post I will be covering the options under the Registry tab. Because many of these options are quite technical, I will not be covering what each setting does. Instead I will be covering what the registry cleaner does on a larger scale, so you can choose whether or not to run the registry cleaner on your system. You’re invited to read up on the CCleaner documentation if you have any further technical questions.
When I run the registry cleaner, I leave all the settings checked. This ensures CCleaner does a thorough inspection of the registry and flags any unneeded registry entries. To start, you will scan the registry for issues. You can then choose to fix all identified issues by having CCleaner remove the unneeded registry entries.
What is the Windows Registry?
All this talk of a registry, and I haven’t even explained what it is yet. The Windows Registry is database of options and settings related to Windows, installed programs, and other miscellaneous tasks required for your computer to function.
Why clean out the registry?
The registry is loaded every time your computer boots up. The more keys and entries inside the registry, the slower your computer can take to finish booting up. Also, unneeded entries can sometimes cause strange error messages or stop certain software from working correctly.
Wrapping Up
CCleaner offers a painfully simple way to inspect and clean-up your computer’s registry. Will it make a drastic effect on your computer’s performance, likely not, but it will prevent or potentially fix errors and strange behavior. Combining registry cleaning with the other tools inside CCleaner can make an actual difference in your computer’s performance.
As always, feel free to post questions and comments below. Thanks for taking the time to read this post.