Every computer with the Microsoft Windows operating system installed, be it XP or Vista, has a registry.
Your computer's registry is where all the information about your computer is stored.
When the registry is filled with invalid data entries or corrupt information, this is when you will notice that your PC may no longer work or perform the way it used to.
What causes or creates the invalid information in your registry? Well, that is usually caused when software or programs are not properly uninstalled or removed.
By removing these invalid entries, you can significantly increase the performance of your PC.
What will you need? A very good registry cleaner! Registry cleaners were created with the purpose or goal of scanning the entire registry and removing those that are no longer associated with a program or software.
There are many benefits with running a full registry scan.
A good software will look for the following entries: Missing file associations Missing startup programs Invalid device drivers Invalid application paths Missing DLL files Missing help files Missing system fonts After performing a registry cleaning, the next step in enhancing the performance of your computer will then be to clean all the temporary files stored in the operating system's TEMP folder.
In Windows, this can easily be done by typing %temp% at the 'Run' line.
To do this, simply go to your start button, an din Windows XP select 'run' from the menu and type %temp%, or in Windows Vista after hitting your start button, you can then type in the same command at the start line.
This will then bring up the temp folder.
Everything in this folder can then be deleted.
No hesitation.
After which, a hard disk defragmentation should be done to finish.
Hope this all helps!