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To repair and clean windows registry problems you should first have an understanding of how the registry works on your computer. Well im going to break it down for you before you even ask yourself “how do I clean my pc registry?” I know in the What is a registry” section of this site I told you that the computers registry was basically the central nervous system of the computer right? Well that’s true but im going to get into a little more detail here for those of you who want to know.
To actually clean the windows registry you must first understand that the registry itself is basically a directory that stores all of the settings and options for the operating system on your computer. Whenever you do anything to your computer such as making changes in the control panel its stored in your computers registry. So to clean and repair windows registry you need to know that it effects everything on your computer if done wrong. That’s where the ease of the software comes into play, to make the registry cleaning process easier.Lets now go over the structure of the registry right quick. Instead of asking yourself “how do I clean my computer’s registry?” you should learn how the registry works so you will understand whats going on. The registry is basically composed of mainly keys,values and hives. I know this may all sound a bit strange at first but im going to try and clear that up for you in the following paragraph. Keys and values make up the larger part of the registry. You should think of keys as folders on your computer because the two are pretty similar. Each key can also contain subkeys which can also contain subkeys etc.
The layout of this looks very similar to that of a website as you will see in this example below:
HKEY_YOURCOMPUTER/Software/Windows/WordYou can see that the main key would be HKEY_YOURCOMPUTER with /software being a subkey as well as windows and word. Registry values are just data pairs stored within the keys themselves. So basically what you have here is just a system for storing your computers information where everything that happens goes into the registry. That’s why a window xp registry clean up program is no different than a registry program that cleans another operating system because they all work the same. So when people ask if the cleaning program supports their operating system the answer is a 99% yes because all registry cleaning programs with for windows 98, 2000, Vista etc. They work for ALL newer versions of windows because the registry is stored the same way pretty much even with newer operating systems. So all registry clean up programs pretty much work the same, its just that some are safer than others as well as have more features.Now Hives are pretty much just the way the registry is seperated into logical sections. Hives almost always begin with HKEY. You can see from the example above that a hive is included and its usually at the beginning. So I know this information isn’t going to really help you fix any critical problems with windows xp registry or any other operating system for that matter, but I think its some good general information you should know to better understand how the registry on your computer works.