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Windows Registry Errors Explained
In computing, the Windows registry is a database which stores settings and options for the operating system for Microsoft Windows 32-bit versions. It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC. Whenever a user makes changes to "Control Panel" settings, or file associations, system policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry.
In all versions of Windows, the Registry can accumulate obsolete and nonfunctioning entries. Older versions of Windows, in particular, were notorious for this, often ending up with Registries containing huge numbers of erroneous entries. This slowed computer operations; and could even lead to crashes.
This led to the creation of a number of third-party software utilities that purported to clean the Registry, finding and eliminating the extraneous, useless, or just plain bogus data stored there.
Even Microsoft eventually got into the act, producing a small, unofficial, unsupported tool called Regclean for the Win9x family of operating systems. Microsoft made several half-hearted attempts at improving Regclean over several years, but Windows ME was then in the works, and it's registry was different enough from the earlier Win9x family to require that Registry tools work differently; and Windows NT/2000/XP required wholly different software. Because of this, Microsoft quietly abandoned Regclean, never having officially released it as a supported product.
Today, third-party Registry cleaning tools abound, filling the gap that Microsoft left. And that's a good thing, because even though XP is much harder to crash than was Windows 9x, it still can benefit from some Registry cleaning. For example, when you upgrade a PC from Win98 to XP, the new operating system will carry along a boatload of Registry settings from the old setup, just in case they might be needed. While this helps ensure that the new setup will work, it also virtually guarantees that the new setup carries excess baggage from Day One.
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