When was the last time you took your car to the mechanic’s for servicing? Why did you take it for a servicing anyway? Forgive us for asking obvious questions, but just as the engine of a car is its soul, which can be wrecked without proper servicing, so is Windows Registry the soul of your PC, and unless you clean Windows Registry regularly, your PC will function much as a car does with a faulty engine.

For those of you who have not heard of Windows Registry, now is the time to start. Brian Ferguson, a 26-year-old software analyst who runs several blogs aimed at educating lay users about the intricacies of their PCs, says he is constantly surprised by the number of people who have no idea of Windows Registry cleaning basics. “It is like someone driving a car without knowing how to fill the gas tank,” he says.

These same people may have been told that cleaning Windows Registry is really no big deal because it only helps when you install or uninstall a new program. How wrong they are! Cleaning Windows Registry is a must for any user who has been using his/her PC for any length of time. This is because as you continuously use your PC, the Registry gets bloated and possibly corrupt.

The Registry is the internal database where all Microsoft Windows applications, including Windows itself, store all data relevant to their smooth operation. And once the Windows Registry is corrupt, you can appreciate that your system will not operate smoothly. Beginning today, therefore, download a trial version of a Registry cleaner tool from the Internet and run it on your machine. Of course, you must be sure that you obtain the tool from a reputable source, but you should get adequate guidance from online user forums and reviews. Note: we recommend RegCure (direct download link), a high quality registry cleaner and repair tool.

Since Windows Registry is the repository of every file that is needed for your Windows operating system to run smoothly, you should realize the importance of keeping it clean and error-free. If you encounter unexplained error messages and your computer crashes or freezes often, you obviously need to repair your registry. As Conrad Haas, a librarian by training and Internet addict by choice, says, “I learnt only a few months ago that there are plenty of corrupt files, paths, and Registry keys that need to be cleaned for Windows Registry to remain error-free. I wasn’t even aware that I needed to repair certain DLL files in my Registry until the problem was pointed out to me.”

For most users like Conrad, the story is the same. However, as we say, the time to start thinking of cleaning your Registry is now. And before you do anything else, make sure you backup your entire Registry, which is the most important part of the Registry cleaning process. That way, if you mess up with the cleaning, you can always restore your Registry to its previous state and try again!