Glossary
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| Crash | This is a temporary (but unbelievably frustrating) problem that just about every computer user will experience at some time or another. Something goes wrong with the computer and it stops working. Often it's almost like someone pressed the pause button on a DVD - it just stands still and doesn't do anything. Normally re-starting the computer will get things up and running again. Often, problems in the registry can cause crashes. |
| DLL | Short for Dynamic Link Library. It's a file that holds information that a computer program needs to be able to work. If you think of a car engine, it's made up of lots of different parts. A Dll file is one of those parts of the engine. The registry stores information about dll files - often long after they've been removed. Registry cleaners remove those no-longer-needed entries into the registry. |
| Defrag, Defragment | This is the process of re-organizing information on your hard drive so that it's all in one continuous part. It's a bit like when you tidy up your office so that it's quicker to find what you need. Over time the registry , as things are removed from the registry, it can become as holy as an old pair of socks. Defragmenting it will put it back together and improve it's performance. |
| Invalid Entry | This is some information that's stored in the Windows registry but shouldn't be! As the months of your computer's life roll by - or even the years - the registry is continually being added to, altered and dipped into for information. The problem is that Windows doesn't do a good job of tidying up the registry. An invalid entry is one that doesn't need to be there any more. Like if you uninstalled a printer but there's still information about it in the registry. The entries to do with that printer are invalid and should be removed. |
| Registry Key | This is part of the registry in Microsoft Windows. A registry key is a bit like a desk draw. It holds information to do with the settings for something on your computer. Registry keys are created when you install software, hardware or change a setting on your computer. |
| Registry entry | Your computer is constantly adding bits of information into your PC's registry. It might be the color you want your desktop to be, or whether to print in draft or high quality mode. Each time it stores something in the registry it is making an entry. When people talk about an entry in the registry, they're talking about a piece of info that's kept in the registry. |
| Registry | Windows computers need a way to store settings and user preferences. The registry is a huge store of information about the hardware, software, folders, fonts, and pretty much everything else on your computer. Your computer can get some info it needs from the registry dozens of times in a single second. |
| Restore Point | A restore point takes a snapshot of all of your computer's settings and saves it on the hard drive. In the case of an emergency, like Windows refusing to start up, you can easily restore your system from this information - as if my magic - to exactly how it was when the snapshot was taken. Some registry repair tools allow you to make system restore points. This all sounds really difficult, but using a restore point in the event of a total PC disaster is incredibly easy. For details on how to do this, you can get the info straight from the horse's mouth: Microsoft: Restoring from a Restore point. |
| Shortcut | These are files that point to other files. Windows lets you have a program in a folder on your hard disk, and create what's called a shortcut to that program. Let's say you have a spreadsheet program in a folder of your hard disk, but you want to be able to start it up by clicking on an icon on your Windows desktop. You could create a shortcut to that program from your desktop. |
| Startup Manager | Many of the registry cleaning software tools come with what's called a startup manager. This is an additional tool - that's very handy - that lets you edit the list of programs that are run when windows starts up. This is usually a list of maybe 20 - 30 programs that are fired up with Windows - often invisibly. Removing programs that you don't NEED to startup makes for much faster loading of Windows. |
Where next?
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The best software I've found |
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Comparison of the major programs |
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Reviews of Registry Cleaning software |
