You will be hard pressed to find an industry which has as much infighting and uncertainty between colleagues as the computer industry and one of the most controversial aspects is the usefulness of registry cleaner software. There is no universal consensus as to whether they pose a valid benefit to the user or whether the benefits are outweighed by the cons.

This is an especially unpleasant and frustrating experience for the average compute user who will in all likelihood have little to no technical knowledge or experience when it comes to the benefits and drawbacks associated with these types of programs and so they rely on the opinion of the “experts.” The only problem is that there is no clear cut or clearly defined answer and instead, the user has to weight the facts for themselves in order to make a final decision!

Whenever we install software, information is installed on the Registry of the computer in order to allow the computer to access the program as well as in order to allow the program to work properly. However, that information stored on the registry may become obsolete, redundant or even corrupted and therefore is of little use. In extreme cases, excessive volumes of redundant information can slow the effectiveness and speed of the computer meaning that the removal of such information would seem to be of some importance.

The registry database is an extremely large database indeed and to make matters even more difficult, in many instances, a single value registry value maybe relied upon by several applications meaning that if that particular value should be broken then the other applications will suffer too.

This means that the manual editing of a registry by the user is not only time-consuming but very risky as well and is something that should not be attempted except by a person with some direct knowledge of what is required. Registry cleaner software packages are an attractive option for this exact reason: not only do they provide the speedy cleaning and improving of the registry but they do so with a reduced margin of error.

However it should be noted that when it comes to these programs, they are only as effective as they have been coded and created and so if they have been sloppily designed and contain a number of logical errors and bugs then the end result is not going to be so reliable.

One of the most controversial and concerning aspects of these programs is that 3rd party applications have no reliable or predictable way in which they can assess the contents of a particular individuals registry and then make a safe and reliable judgement call as to what is irrelevant, corrupted and what is not needed. Therefore, whilst in theory these programs should reduce the margin of error as well as risk posed to the computer, the reality is that in practise, they can actually increase it to quite a significant degree.

Of course, the above scenario is based on the idea that damage inflicted by a registry cleaner program is a result of careless/sloppy coding. However, there has been an alarming number of cases whereby hackers and criminals have created fraudulent programs which masquerade as registry cleaner applications but which in reality actually cause harm to the computer in a number of ways.

One of the most common ways in which damage is inflicted by the usage of a keylogger program, which is a program that will record every key stroke that is submitted by the user. The danger here is that details such as passwords are then compromised.

I hope this article has been informative and has given you more of an insight into registry cleaner software.
If you would like to learn more about the top 5 registry cleaners available on the net go to http://top5registrycleaners.net