I understand that the registry in windows can get bogged down after time. What I want to know is, what are some good programs for cleaning it up or good guides to teach me how to mess around in the registry. I would normally just Google something like this but I don’t also trust the results that yields and I want to be careful with the registry in windows. Many thanks.
I use CCleaner and Glary Utilities.
and never use Drive Cleaner, it borked my ATI drivers while removing old Nvidia registry stuff
CCleaner is great, considering its also free and top notch. as for glary never used it?
Registry Mechanic works wonders. It can clean, optimize, and defragment your registry.
Alright cool, I look into these programs. Anyone know somewhere I can learn to the ropes of using the registry?
I’m using CCleaner too. Its simple and good. 
Maybe this helps you about the registry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry
Glary is also free and it has all kinds of utilities (full list here).
Well you don’t really use the registry… if you are interested about technical details, there is always Wikipedia, and if you want to explore it, run “regedit”. As for cleaning, these programs will suffice.
What does that expression mean, anyway? :hmph:
Edit: :ninja:'d
Cool, I thought that you could clean the registry without programs if you learned it. I already knew about regedit I’ve used it once or twice. As for learn the ropes it means to like learn how to do things.
Manual registry cleaning would probably be a pain in the ass.
Yeah, but you’d get all the trash
Also MORE SWAMPFOX SIGS
Manual registry cleaning would take days…
I have used ccleaner for ages.
I have heard Glary Utilities does a bit more than your standard scrub tho. Try it out and let us know how you feel about it.
I didn’t mess with exactly what the programs do, I left it default. However here is what I think, they’re both good programs but Glary Utilities seems to be superior. When I did clean up and registry clean up it caught things that Ccleaner didn’t. Glary Utilities has more features. Ccleaner is smaller but not enough for it to make a difference, it also runs faster however again not enough to make a difference. They both ask me for UAC permission and that pisses me off since I don’t want to lower they lose points for that > 
. I havn’t used them enough to make a final decision (ima keep em both installed a while before I cut one) but I think that Glary Utilities is in the lead.
You didn’t try Registry Mechanic did you?
No I didn’t, ccleaner and Glary Tools seemed to be the most popular so I prioritized them. Ima try it though.
Manual registry cleaning is just going through the registry and seeing entries to programs you uninstalled a while ago, for instance, and removing them.
All the program does is speed up the process; it goes through all of your registry entries, checks out what the entries point to, and if it points to nothing the entry is useless, and it removes it. That’s one of the scenarios.
Think of it this way:
In your local library, there is a cabinet filled with cards. Each card has information about one library book. You can go through all the cards manually and trash those that refer to books no longer in the library, or you can use a program to quickly sort through all of them, even if not as efficiently.
Protip:
Manual registry cleaning is most useful when you have some conflicting registry entries/a very disorganized registry, where a program removing a “useless” entry can make another program stop functioning properly. Or, when you only want to remove one specific entry.
Make sure you get the full version. The trial version’s a bitch.
I suggest that you make sure you have backups just in case you or a program muck something up. I know this from experience.
I know it seems obvious but it’s easy to forget.
Registry Mech : “Weve found 3630 problems, but were only gonna fix 30”
full version is great though.