FREE Register Cleaner – Friend or Foe?

Free register cleaner software abound on the Internet as more and more software developers and providers produce this kind of software, recognizing its importance in the maintenance of computer systems of all kinds. The use of a free register cleaner ensures that a computer system continues to perform in top conditions. However, should you really go for the free solutions or the paid ones?

Free Register Cleaner – What is the Windows Registry?

First of all, what do registry cleaners do anyway?
They ‘clean‘ your PC´s Windows registry.
What is the Windows registry?

The Windows registry is a database that contains data of all the settings in any 32-bit version of a Windows operating system. These settings include things like software, hardware, user, and preference information.

Some of the instances when registry information changes are whenever a user changes any of the following:

• Settings in the Control Panel.


• System policies.


• File associations.


• Installed software.

How the Windows Registry Causes Trouble...

In all Windows versions, the registry starts becoming inconsistent and becomes a problem when it accumulates non-functioning and outdated registry entries. Earlier versions of Windows were especially prone to this, as they often had a lot of incorrect registry entries. This caused poor performance in those systems and even caused system crashes.

The Birth of Free Register Cleaner Software

It was these errors in the Windows registry that prompted third party software development companies to create the free register cleaner. This software was meant to clean the Windows registry by looking for and removing excessive, unnecessary and invalid registry entries.

Microsoft soon followed suit by coming up with Regclean. Regclean is a small application that was considered the unofficial and unsupported free register cleaner for the Win9x group of operating systems. Microsoft continued to try to improve Regclean as a free register cleaner but with future Windows versions having entirely different registries and registry tools that were not compatible with Regclean, the registry cleaner tool was disregarded altogether. It should be noted, though, that Regclean is still available as a supported application in some none–Microsoft web sites.

Free Register Cleaner Applications after Microsoft

Although the Regclean project seemed a failure, many continued to finish the trek that Microsoft started. This is beneficial to Windows users because despite the stability of the latest versions of Windows such as Windows XP, there are still benefits to running a free register cleaner. Some of these instances are the following:

• Upgrading from Win98 to WinXP might carry over some of the previous settings, which the free register cleaner can help clean out.


• One free register cleaner alone may not be enough to totally clean out your computer´s registry.


• A free register cleaner can clean your registry of inconsistencies due to hardware ⁄ software installations, uninstallations and upgrades.

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