Cleaning and Optimizing the Windows 10 Registry

Cleaning and optimizing the Windows 10 registry is not an operation to be performed every day. Rather, after uninstalling applications, or after a few months of using the computer, traces can accumulate within the registry, which you can remove.

Cleaning and optimizing the Windows 10 registry can also be done if you are experiencing problems with your computer, such as a quick attempt to fix your PC before applying more demanding methods or before reinstalling Windows.

I tried Wise Registry Cleaner. The application is very simple and fast to use. Moreover, it can be downloaded in portable format, which does not require installation. Of course, you need administrator privileges to launch Wise Registry Cleaner.

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In this article I describe the Cleaning and the Defragmentation of the Windows 10 registry, using Wise Registry Cleaner. I will describe in a separate article the Optimization: in fact it is necessary to understand in detail the proposed optimizations, before accepting them. Some optimizations, in fact, could also be counterproductive.

What is the Windows 10 registry

The Windows registry is a database where operating system settings, hardware information, program options, and many other system data are stored.

to manually access the windows registry you use the regedit. To start regedit, administrator privileges are required.

The Windows registry is divided into the following keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM)
HKEY_USERS (HKU)
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG (HKCC)

The Windows 10 registry is located in the folder C:WindowsSystem32config, as far as computer settings are concerned, which are common to all users. the user data (present in the hkcu key) is located in the C:UsersUsernameNTUSER. dat.

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To carry out the cleaning of the Windows 10 registry with Wise Registry Cleaner, I recommend using the option Quick scan. Wise Registry Cleaner will only search for registry items that are safe to remove.

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After scanning, the “issues” that Wise Registry Cleaner found in the Windows registry are listed. The list is divided into different categories.

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By expanding each category, you can consult the list of individual detected problems.

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It is also possible to expand the single problem, to understand, in detail, why Wise Registry Cleaner wants to eliminate it.

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The problems can be of various kinds. There may be:

references to files or folders that no longer exist on the computer;
empty shell commands;
file types that have no associated application;
Non-existent App ID references;
files present in mru lists (recently opened files);
missing MUI references (multilingual user interface);
etc…

I recommend eliminating only the "problems" (as Wise Registry Cleaner defines them) that are not risky. After viewing the list of problems that Wise Registry Cleaner intends to eliminate, you need to press the button Cleaning at the top right to start the fixes.

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Wise Registry Cleaner also allows you to make a Full scan it's a Custom scan.

Using these commands, you can more thoroughly scan the Windows 10 registry, but it may be less safe to delete detected "issues". In fact, the registry keys detected as "problems" could actually be useful to some installed applications.

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Wise Registry Cleaner, defragmenting the registry

After you clean up the Windows registry, you can consider also running the defragmentation. With this term, Wise Registry Cleaner wants to indicate the method to make the registry more compact, reducing white space and redundant keys.

First of all, click on the Defragmentation up.

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After that, you can start the analysis of the registry, by clicking, with the mouse, on the button Analyze at the top right, to evaluate the actual benefit of a possible defragmentation.

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To start defragmentation, you must close all applications. Additionally, the computer will restart.

Click on Defragment at the top right and give confirmation.

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After confirmation, a restore point is created, and after that, the computer is restarted.

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Should you clean and defragment the Windows 10 registry?

While having performed windows registry cleaning and defragmentation, I have not seen an improvement in the performance of the computer, as many claim. Probably, the improvements can only be there if the computer already has real problems with the registry.

If cleaning and defragmenting the registry are operations to be performed once in a while, preferably in case of problems with the computer, instead it may be more useful to carry out a cleaning of the hard disk with Wise Disk Cleaner. I talked about it in this article.