Fix Computer Registry
Want to know how?
I strongly caution everyone who wants to know how to fix computer registry to think twice before trying to edit their windows registry manually.
Editing your registry manually can stall your system, make it unstable, possibly even lose all the data, settings, and other important data stored on your windows registry.
Knowing how to fix computer registry issues in theory is one thing but doing it in practice is another.
Before you start editing your windows registry make sure that you back up your registry and your system properly and know exactly how to recover if you encounter problems.
If you haven’t edited your registry before try to find some one who can help you out.
Understanding the registry is difficult enough and editing it extremely dangerous, to your PC!
Fix Computer Registry – Download A Cleaner Here
In order to fix computer registry manually you will need to click Start>Run and type ‘regedit’. A explorer like window will open which will display all the major sections of your windows registry. From here you can click on individual sections and edit them manually. The main sections you should have are:
- HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- HKEY_USERS
- HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
The job of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
This section of the registry stores information pertaining to registered applications such as OLE object classes and file associations.
These entries are tied to the applications that use these items. In windows registry versions above windows 2000 the HKCR is a combination of the user based HKCU\software\Classes as well as the machine based HKLM\Software\Classes.
So if there is a value in both the mentioned subkeys the one which is in HKCU\Software\Classes will be the one that takes precedence above all others.
This system allows for either registration of COM objects or user specific registrations of these objects. This portion needs to be edited if you want to remove invalid entries pertaining to applications. This could be in the case of rogue applications or applications that are causing your registry to crash.
The job of HKEY_CURRENT_USER
This section of the registry is also called HKCU for short. This section of the registry stores information relating to the user currently logged in to the system. Now the HKCU key is like a link to the subkey of HKEY_USERS which directly corresponds to the person using it so the same information can be seen in both locations. On windows based on the NT kernel user settings are stored in their own file called USRCLASS.DAT and NTUSER.DAT which is further stored inside of their own documents subfolder. This portion of the registry does not always need to be edited except for when there is a problem with user settings.
The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Also called HKLM in short this portion of the registry stores information and settings relating to the local computer. This portion contains four subkeys i.e. SECURITY, SAM, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM which can easily be located within their files in the %SystemRoot%\System32\config section. There is a fifth section but this section is created dynamically, its called HARDWARE, and is not stored in any file. Here you will find information relating to hardware devices, drivers and services on you system. If you are having hardware problems then this is definitely the section you will want to edit, based on what problem you are facing.
The HKEY_USERS
Also called HKU in short this is where all the subkeys relating to the user profile is stored on the machine. The user hives are only loaded when there is a currently logged in user.
The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
Also called HKCC this is probably going to be the file you most often edit if your system is running slow or crashing. This contains runtime information but the information is not stored permanently on the hard drive. This is actually sort of a link to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current.
Conclusion – It’s probably best not to try!
As you can see trying to fix computer registry by hand leaves a large margin of error for things to go wrong. If you want to save time and ensure that nothing goes wrong then you should use registry scanning and cleaning software. Good software might cost you a few bucks but you save a lot of time, money and frustration in the long run. Not to mention that you don’t endanger your system further by trying to fix computer registry entries manually. This is something an ordinary person really shouldn’t delve in to lightly if faced by registry errors or system crashes. And I wouldn’t advise people to fix computer registry errors manually even if they have the technical expertise to do so simply because it’s a waste of time.
