The registry is a very large database where all programs installed on your computer, including Windows itself, keep their settings.
The programs write, read and delete entries in the registry all the time. Because of this the registry gets fragmented. The different pieces of data in the registry aren't stored in the normal order, and this can slow down your computer a lot.
Imagine reading a book where all the pages have been shuffled, and instead of the normal order of pages (pages 1, 2, 3...) you get a totally unnatural order (page 17, page 5, page 14, page 1...). Can you still read the book? Yes! You can search for page 1, read it, and then go through all the pages of the book and search for page 2, read it, and so on. Think about how slow this can be, compared to reading a book in which the pages are in normal order.
The same thing happens with the registry - because of the constant reading, writing and deleting of items, after a month or two, the registry items get to be in an unnatural order, which is very slow to read. And because the programs need data from the registry, this slows them down.
The registry optimizer wizard defragments your registry and optimizes it for faster access.
Absolutely yes. When cleaning the registry or when using the optimizer all data is carefully saved prior to the operation. The program uses several "backup plans" in case something goes wrong. The registry cleaner only removes keys that we believe to be 100% in error. There are several steps of the operation:
saving the actual registry to disk
verifying that the registry was correctly saved
saving the actual registry to disk
optimizing the saved registry
verifying the optimized registry
rebooting and loading the new registry
If any one of the above steps fails
then last one is NOT performed.
Before using the registry optimization wizard, please close all the open documents you are working on.
The wizard first creates a fresh, optimized copy of the registry containing the same data as your old registry and then restarts your computer in order to replace your old registry with the new, optimized one. The first steps of the wizard are very simple - you just have to press the Next button, in order for the wizard to create the new optimized registry. Please note that while creating this optimized registry, because of intense reading from your current registry, your computer may appear to lock for several minutes. This is why we recommend you to close all your open documents before using this wizard.
The final step of this wizard is:
When you press the Next button, your computer will restart in order to replace the old registry with the new, optimized and defragmented one. Again, don't worry; the new registry will contain all the data from the old one. Please be patient during the restart. Because of the registry replacement operation, this restart will take a little bit longer than usual.
After the restart the registry will be optimized and your computer should operate faster and smoother.
Another tool you can use to maintain your registry is the Registry Cleaner. We would recommend you to first use the Registry Cleaner, then the Registry Optimizer.