A Beginners Guide To Fixing A Corrupt Registry

When you notice that “State of the Art” computer of yours slowing turning into a low-end computer, it’s likely a sign of a virus. If a full system scan doesn’t work, it could be something else. What is it? Maybe a faulty hardware driver, or just faulty hardware. If everything is in working order, it’s time to look at the Windows registry–an area often overlooked by even the casual PC users.

A registry keeps internal information of a program or hardware for easy access by the CPU. Excessive use of software and hardware will eventually bring your computer to a crawl. Computer viruses also play a role in degrading the registry.

Don’t go to Plan B just yet. There are ways around to fixing the registry before restoring Windows or using “regedit.exe”. The built-in registry editor can be executed by typing “regedit” in the Start menu from the “Run…” application. It is not recommended for beginners unless you know what you are doing. Editing an important entry in the registry may cause unexpected problems to prevent use of the computer.

There are free programs that can edit the registry the similar to “regedit”, but offers extra confidence in removing problem entries, including prompts to backup the registry before repairing. A few registry editors also include addition features for cleaning unwanted files to prevent system slowdowns later.

For a last ditch effort: It’s time to restore your system’s configuration to a point in time when it worked correctly. This is preformed by going into Safe Mode: restart Windows and hit the F8 key until Safe Mode configurations are presented on the screen. Select “Last Known Good Configuration” and it will roll Windows back to the previous settings.

As suggested, this is only to be taken seriously for beginning PC users. If you’re up for the challenge, try “regedit.exe”. It doesn’t have the same functionality as the software, but think of it as the beginning of becoming of PC expert. But be sure to make a backup of everything as getting changes wrong is bad news.