If you read this blog regularly, you know that the Windows Registry controls just about everything that happens in the operating system. The registry comes set with many default values that work perfectly well for the average person, but may not suit your needs very well. If you’re up to fooling around with the Windows Registry at all, you can personalize your computer a bit, speed up your computer, and make it behave in ways that may be more compatible with the type of work you do.

Editing The Registry Isn’t For Novices

I don’t advocate registry editing for the complete novice. It’s very possible to make a mistake, or change something inadvertently that will affect the way your computer works in an unexpected and unpredictable way. Editing the registry by hand is to be strictly avoided unless you have a feel for what you’re doing. Keep in mind that changes to the registry are immediate and unforgiving.

As always, you’ll want to back up the registry before you make any changes at all. RegCure makes a registry backup each time it makes a change to the registry, and that’s a good habit to get into if you’re of a mind to make changes to this all-important part of your computer.

Disable User Account Control One “feature” of Vista that users really complained to Microsoft about is the User Account Control (UAC) messages that Windows Vista will place on the screen when you ask the computer to do something that could be dangerous. The UAC prompts must be cleared before the computer will initiate the action the user has requested. For novice users, these prompts may cause them an unnecessary amount of angst because more often than not, the UAC warning sounds a lot more dire than it needs to. The UAC is designed to alert users to potential unsafe actions, but it does tend to become annoying. You can speed up your computer by disabling the UAC prompts. Keep in mind, however, that this change in the registry is universal; it will apply to every user.

Open RegEdit. Within RegEdit, find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\System
Find ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin and change its value to 00000000.
This setting suppresses the UAC warning messages.

Keep in mind that if you make this change, the system will not alert you to potentially dangerous actions you might otherwise take without thinking. In future posts, I’ll have more tips that involve customizing the registry to boost your system’s performance.

Photo Credit: Richard Keen, via Flickr

So, you got yourself a registry fixer and used it to clean up your registry, defrag your hard drive, tweak your start up menu and eliminate spyware and adware, and your computer is still running kind of slow.  Well, do not worry, there is one trick that is still left that might boost your speed. However, this trick will leave you without any visual bells and whistles, and could make a your computing experience a little bit drab.

Changing the visual settings

To make your PC a bit more visually stimulating, Windows has incorporated a pretty slick set of visual effects into their interactive interface. You have shadows under the pointer, icons that fade, animated windows and other cool features whose only values happen to be of an aesthetic nature and are really completely unnecessary when it comes to your PC’s overall performance. Windows does allow you the option to turn some or all of these features off you would rather have your processor’s power focused on more important things.

To change visual effects…

Go to the Start menu and click on the Control Panel. Click on the Performance and Maintenance Category then on the System Icon. The Windows System Properties menu should slide neatly into view replete with a nice outline and shadow underneath it. Now click onto the Advanced tab. Click on the Settings button underneath the Performance heading and this next window should pop neatly into view….

Now unless you were previously tinkering with your computer’s visual settings, most if not all of these options are probably checked, giving your Desktop a nice slick look. If you think such nifty visuals are pointless, then I recommend that you click on the the “adjust for best performance” option. This will pretty much turn off all the cool visual features and free up a ton of processing power for other, more important things.  If you want to keep some of these features, but not others (like who needs shadows anyways) then you should click on custom and then pick and choose which options you want to stick around and which can go away.

Kinda Dull

After trying this on my own PC, I found the result rather drab and dull. While the PC seemed to run a little bit faster, I found myself missing the bells and whistles that I once took for granted. While these visual effects are unnecessary when it comes to getting the job done, they do help make your desktop feel a bit more visually inviting and I found myself missing the look. I think that this option is for people who have a really weak processor and need to squeeze all the juice that they can get out of it and not for people with a decent power who repair their registry on a weekly basis, defrag their hard drive and keep their PC free of viruses, spyware and adware.

With all the trouble your computers registry tends to give you, you may have asked yourself whether this whole registry thing is actually worth having in the first place. How important could this registry be to the daily operation of the computer anyway? It just seems like a overly complicated data filing system that can easily get overrun and clogged up with junk. Well, unfortunately for you, the registry  happens to be an integral part of your computers operating system which you cannot merely get rid of as if it were a appendix or gall bladder. The best thing you can do is performance regular maintenance on you registry and hope for the best.

The registry defined

A registry is a list of gifts a couple who is about to get married gives to a specific store so that their family and friends… oh wait, that does not seem to be what we are talking about, dang nab wikipedia.

The registry we are talking about is actually database used by windows to store system configuration information. Information that is typically stored on the registry are things like…

• file associations and object linking and embedding (OLE) information
• current user preferences
• information for each user
• Your machine’s hardware, installed application and operating system settings
• Display and Printer settings
• Performance data

All window apps tend to write something into the registry at some time, especially during installation. If you happen to download a lot of different applications or constantly change your preferences and setting, your registry  is most likely in a constant state of flux with data always being added and subtracted from it (well, added anyway).

What does the registry look like?

Your registry is configured in a tree structure breaking down to specific nodes and keys, sub keys and data entries (that are called values).  If you open it up by running regedit.exe at the command prompt you will notice that it looks very similar to your Windows explorer menu.

When you run an application, it will most likely either need a  associated key, a specific data value from a key or a group of related data keys  in order to run. Upon boot up your system automatically retrieves specific data sets (called hives) which are a group of keys, sub keys and values which  contain back up system data.

What causes registry problems?

Missing or invalid keys within the registry will cause your PC to crash repeatedly, stall, or just plain slow down. Most of these problems occur during the program instillation and removal process. If you are constantly deleting and installing programs, improperly installing software, deleting start up programs, or running programs with suspected spyware, chances are you have a large number of registry problems.

How to fix registry problems

If you know exactly what you are doing and read through all the help files in windows, you could attempt to fix the registry on your own by  running the regedit program. Going this route however, can be extremely precarious if you do not know exactly what  you are doing, and what data values can be erased. It is a good idea to make a back up before you proceed and only then proceed with the utmost caution. If computer brain surgery is not your thing, you might want to look into getting a good registry fixer to do all the thinking  for you. Registry fixers are found everywhere on the web and are either free or are priced quite reasonably, especially when compared to the price of a new pc if you cannot get yours to boot after monkeying around with it. The good registry fixers on the market will allow you to make a data backup in case the changes lead to undesired results and will take you through the process point by point.