How to do a registry cleanup on vista

To run Automatic Repair which will attempt to fix a corrupt registry on your Windows 10 system, follow these steps:.

In Windows XP only the Professional version , the permissions of the registry can block you from editing certain keys. Read more at Windows Recovery Disks. The NeoSmart Support Forums , member-to-member technical support and troubleshooting.

Applicable Systems This Windows-related knowledgebase article applies to the following operating systems:. Download Easy Recovery Essentials. Backing up current registry hives. Deleting current registry hives. Windows XP show hidden files screen.

Using a stopwatch with our desktop system, we saw 10 seconds shaved off its boot time. Microsoft Word and an image editor also loaded a little faster. Note that this test was done using a spinning platter hard drive, not a solid state drive.

None of the cleaners managed to fix a gnarly problem with spoolsv. We focused on their ease of use, the number of errors found, and whether they introduced any hazards, such as the lack of automatic backups before making changes.

And except for Registry First Aid, none of the products would repair faulty entries, but instead just deleted entries that were no longer valid. Registry First Aid is eager to help you fix and tidy your registry—and it does a terrific job, too. Of all the programs tested here, this one inspired the most confidence, both from a safety perspective and in the way it handled registry problems. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, and the program includes a registry searching tool, a backup and restore tool, the ability to take snapshots of the registry, and a compression tool.

Registry First Aid supports all versions of Windows. We were comfortable with the way it listed problems, either by category such as invalid file or DLL, invalid path, or unused software entries or by safety level. We could cut the invalid substring or, in some cases, repair the entry. While the program was scanning, we were able to examine each listing, check or uncheck it, or open the specific entry in the registry. One quibble: The tool attempted to find a home in the system tray, unnecessarily adding clutter just so it could regularly check for new versions.

We disabled it in the settings. It includes a registry cleaner as well as a registry compactor along with a few other administrative tools, and is essentially a scaled-down version of its bigger sibling, jv16 PowerTools see below.

In RegSupreme Pro you can set it to scan either quickly or safely, or somewhere in between you slide a bar along a scale. RegSeeker is free for personal use and has a handful of other registry-focused utilities.

The tools include a keyword finder; a utility to examine installed application registry entries, assorted histories for instance, browser and Start-menu items , and Startup entries; and a tool to tweak more settings.

On the same screen, the app presents a dangerous option: Auto Clean, which we encourage you to avoid. The manual cleanup option displays the results to you, and you can choose the entries you want to remove and the entries you want to retain in the registry. Defragment the registry using the included registry defrag tool, that will help to make the registry contiguous and compact. Use an advanced registry cleaner to remove all privacy information stored on your PC.

Privacy information is stored by your system to keep track of your activities. This information can be used by hackers for malicious purposes.

By using a good registry cleaner, you can remove this information from your PC and keep it safe from malicious attacks. Organize the startup programs on your Vista computer to manage the programs that load during the system startup. Enable you to remove any malicious registry entry added by malware such as Viruses, Trojans, and Spyware. In reply to Shilohbob's post on June 3, Thanks, do Microsoft tech think the same way.

In reply to mnayak2's post on June 3, Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the use of a registry cleaning utility can be solved. Ken Blake. Cleaning of the registry isn't needed and is dangerous.

Leave the registry alone and don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of, having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.

The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit it may have. If they always caused problems, they would disappear from the market almost immediately. Many people have used a registry cleaner and never had a problem with it.