Welcome to the second edition of Keep Your PC Healthy. This newsletter is designed for those with just minimal PC knowledge, but want to learn a little more and do some things to ensure their PC or laptop runs like new.

In this issue, we discuss the Windows Disk Cleanup utility and the Windows registry. We hope you find it useful.

Thanks for reading.

Before we discuss cleaning your computer's registry, let's first explain what the registry is. The registry is a very large database of every file, program, folder and process on your computer - what they are and where they are located. Another way to look at the registry is as a set of files describing everything on your computer.

The information in the registry is used to tell programs how to run and where files that are needed to run a program are located. When files or programs are added or removed from your PC or laptop, the registry is modified accordingly. Over time, because of these modifications, additions and deletions, the registry becomes disorganized - just like that desk when we pile up papers and throw some things away! And just like we lose time and become aggravated when we can't find that needed paper on our desk, our PC performs more poorly as the registry becomes disorganized.

So, it would seem that the registry is worth cleaning. But doing so is not as simple as running the Disk Cleanup utility. It's more complicated, it's more technical, and without the proper knowledge, it's dangerous. You can't just access the registry files directly. There is a Windows utility, RegEdit, but running it requires technical knowledge about the Windows operating system and the programs running - definitely not for everyone. But there are third-party registry cleaners that can do some of the cleaning for you, without requiring the technical knowledge.

There are many things to do to keep your PC running fast. As discussed previously, defragmentation is one. Cleaning the registry, while perhaps not as straightforward, is another way to boost your PCs performance. We'll discuss the registry more in future issues.