A registry cleaner is a software application developed for the Microsoft Windows operating system with the purpose of automatically identifying and managing temporary or redundant registry data. For the reason that the Windows registry is a central settings and configurations database used by the Microsoft Windows operating system at every major process, constant maintenance is required, the same as with any other similar database.
The software applications that are currently on the market and known as effective registry cleaners are in high numbers, however, not all of them are efficient and not all of them do their job as supposed to. For this reason, it is strongly recommended for each PC user to first take the time to read some reviews and usability reports related to the application that they are evaluating and only then take the decision of actually purchasing the product. This is a crucial procedure, especially in the case of PC users with relatively no Windows registry cleaner related experience.
Experienced PC user or just PC enthusiast out of hobby, it is indeed recommended to use a registry cleaner for the reason that sooner or later the Windows registry will become crowded with invalid, temporary or redundant data that will have a major impact over the overall performance of the operating system. Due to the size and complexity of the structure of the Windows registry, any attempt at manually identifying such redundant database entries will be proof to be both impractical and inefficient due to the fact that the process will take too much time and will be completely unreliable.
Registry cleaners or registry cleanup software are designed to run completely automatically and are capable to identify, backup and remove redundant information from the Windows registry. Such an automatic process will be able to identify invalid Windows registry entries, missing file references and broken links in a record amount of time and with increased accuracy due to a set of pre-programmed procedures.
Experts believe that registry cleaner software will be a common Windows operating system maintenance tool for as long as the Windows registry is required to store and access application related data.