Bloated Registry

I have a T60 with a bloated registry. I know it is possible to edit that, but it is hard to identify what is what and even deleted items tend to creep back in. Is there any good way to deal with this? Thanks.

 

The obvious question would be: how do you know it's "bloated"? By what measure or indication do you make this determination? A bare install of Windows 7 can have a system hive over 100mb, which is ridiculous to me just by default.

Nevertheless, registry bloat isn't what it used to be. Yes, they've gotten bigger, but the algorithms for paging necessary components of the registry into and out of ram has also become better. I doubt you'd be able to measure a difference in boot or application load times even after "un-bloating" your registry.

 

Well, it slows mine down, but my computer is over 3 years old, so perhaps it is behind the times. However, it also seems to slow down my girlfriend's Acer, under 1 year old (but with Vista....).

 

As mentioned above, how did you determine this is the registry? A machine that is three years old will have LOTS of various files and bloat on it; any nonsense in your registry is probably a far lesser issue than all the nonsense all over your file system after multiple Windows updates, driver updates, and whatnot.

Again, while registry bloat is a real condition, it's ability to impact overall machine performance is fairly limited. In my opinion, using an automated cleanup tool to 'clean out' your registry might work, but the performance gain will be absolutely tiny.

 

Use Ccleaner, its not invasive as special "registry cleaners" and you can back up your registry for restoration.

Cleaning the registry annually is good practice.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I use CCleaner and have not noticed any speed improvement. Can anyone recommend a registry cleaner and also advise how to back up registry? I have not tried CCleaner on my girl friend's computer, so perhaps I should do that and see if there is a speed change.

 

This is like saying "maybe the plumbing is bad" when you come home to a cold house.

I know very few people that can actually edit a registry taking out mass amounts of left over dead crap without hosing their system. Typically it's to re-install an uninstall gone horribly wrong (looking at you Symantec, and you Creative) and someone knows that much about editing a registry, wouldn't need to ask this question.

I suggest you leave the registry alone, especially if this is your first inclination on the cause of a "slow computer".

In my experience, automatic registry cleaners do far more harm than good.