How To Stop Computer Errors and Crashes
Cleaning the registry has become an important part of computer maintenance these days. This is because the newer operating systems, Windows XT and Vista, very easily become corrupted. Also, though corruption could be a problem with earlier operating systems such as Windows 98, it was not nearly as big a problem as it is in today’s huge operating systems.
Registry files are huge and complex. Some of these files tell each command a computer operation is carrying out where it will find its next needed file. You can think of these files as pointers.
Registry Corruption Causes Slowdowns
When pointers from no longer needed software still exist in the registry, they point to files an operation doesn’t need or worse yet, they point to a file that is no longer in the registry. This means an operation will be sent out looking for something that is useless for its completion. So, all an unneeded pointer does is waste time. These types of pointers are a form of registry corruption.
Inaccurate, or false pointers will make a computer take a long time to complete what should be a quick task. This is because every operation that encounters a false pointer will be sent off looking for something the operating system doesn’t want. So, when there are many false pointers in the registry, a single operation must complete several unnecessary operations before does the one it needs to.
So you can see, the overall effect registry corruption has on a computer is that is slows down its operations. Sometimes this slow down will not be too noticeable. However, it is possible for registry corruption to slow the computer to the point it makes it difficult to use the computer at all. Registry corruption also makes a computer prone to errors and even the blue screen of death.
Viruses and Spyware
In general, the problems a corrupt registry causes mocks those of a computer that is infected with viruses or spyware. Viruses and spyware will also cause your computer operations to slow down. This is because the virus or spyware or whatever parasite is infecting your computer will steal some or all your computers resources.
If all, or a high percentage of your computer’s resources are being used spyware and viruses, your computer won’t be able to perform any task, even an easy one like connect to a Web site. The way to check to see how many resources are being used is to press ctrl-alt-del, which will open up your task manager in Windows XP. If you have Vista, you will have choose “open task manager after you press ctrl-alt-del.
If a lot of your computer’s resources were being used and you tried to get the computer to do any task, like open up your word processor, you would see your computer would open it very slowly, if it was able to do it at all.
To give a quick recap, we all need to keep our computers to be free of viruses and spyware. However, if this is all we do we still may have a computer that is slow and error prone and may crash on occasion. The reason a spyware free computer would behave like this is that it probably has a corrupt registry.
It is not a matter of whether cleaning spyware and viruses is more or less important than scanning for and cleaning registry corruption. Doing both these things are of utmost importance for keeping your PC fast and error free. Yes, it is too bad we have to use registry cleaners and spyware/virus cleaners so we can keep are computers running well, but the fact is; we do have to.
Tags: computer maintenance, computer registry, computer viruses, computers, registry cleaner, registry cleaners, registry corruption, spyware