How would you feel if you had the power to repair your PC on your own whenever it's needed? Perhaps, you are experiencing errors, overall instability, or you'd just like to optimize your PC to run at peak efficiency. With a little bit of knowledge and some great software, this is a lot easier than it seems.

One common expectation about owning a PC is that it will never freeze, crash, or lose data. Until the realization comes one day when you try to check your e-mail and your screen totally freezes. Suddenly, a nasty looking blue screen appears with white letters showing you a whole bunch of gobbly-gook you've never seen before. Welcome to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Unsure what you should do, you try rebooting the PC. Yet another BSOD. For some users, this tends to be the moment that panic sets in. For others, this might be just another incident of PC-rage. In any event, it looks like your PC needs a little TLC.

Unfortunately, this situation is all too common. When users purchase their PCs, there's very little direction given as to what type of maintenance is involved for optimal performance and securing your data. Plug and play, so to speak. We go through a great deal of effort to protect and maintain ourselves, our families, our cars, and our homes. Those same efforts should be taken to protect your investment in your PC to keep it running smoothly. If you value those e-mails, pictures, mp3s, family videos, and financial information on your PC, then consider how you would feel if it suddenly was gone. If you consider the fact of the investment required, just to keep the data you have, it's a small price to pay compared to losing it.

Typically these errors can be narrowed down to a single point of failure; the windows registry. The registry is database of keys and data that is used to store settings and options for the Windows operating system. This includes control panel settings, hardware settings, and file associations. Some software packages will also leverage the registry as a place to store settings.

Some registry settings can be global, meaning that the settings are the same for all users. For example, any hardware settings will typically be global as they are required to keep the PC operational and will not change from user to user. Other settings will be user-specific. This will ensure, for any PCs that have multiple users, that each user's unique settings will be retained (i.e. desktop settings, browser settings, e-mail, etc.).

As components on the PC are used (whether it be hardware, software, or internal Windows processes), these components may access the registry at any given time. Typically the registry is accessed during Windows startup, hardware initialization, and starting or using software. Using a unique key name (determined when the software is installed), the component will call the registry with the key name that is associated with a specific setting. If the registry finds the key, it will return the value that is contained within the key. The component will then use this value for the appropriate setting.

During the life of the PC, hardware peripherals are added, new software is installed, along with various updates and patches. Conversely, obsolete hardware may be removed and unused software is uninstalled. While all this is happening, your registry is being accessed and updated. As these actions update the registry, sometimes they may add or update information incorrectly, or are not removed when components are uninstalled. The result is a bloated registry full of invalid or corrupt keys. As the registry becomes more and more bloated, the more difficult it becomes for Windows to find entries within the registry. Because of the volume of keys stored in the registry, the more there are, the longer it takes for Windows to find something. When it does find what's it's looking for, there is also a greater chance that the entry it found is incorrect or invalid.

As this situation progresses, Windows will start to exhibit certain symptoms. Response time of the PC will gradually decrease to a point where the machine is eventually rendered useless. As the performance decreases, the likelihood of Windows errors, screen freezes, and system crashes will increase. With that you also increase the chances of irreversible damage to PC (more noticeably, the loss of valuable data).

The longer the issue is left unresolved, the more difficult it becomes to troubleshoot. The earlier that these problems can be found, the easier they will be to fix and the less likely it will be that you might suffer serious consequences.

Registry related errors can vary depending on the source of the problem. These errors might be specific to a particular piece of software or hardware installed on the PC or possible related to a Windows configuration. The following issues are symptomatic of a corrupt registry:

System Crashes
Computer Freezing
Missing file associations
Missing startup programs
Invalid device drivers
Invalid application paths
Missing DLL files
Missing help files
Missing system fonts
General Protection Fault errors
Invalid Page Fault errors
Fatal Exception errors
Hardware errors

Keep in mind that it is possible that errors could be a combination of more than one problem and a corrupt registry is just part of it. So how, exactly, do you determine if your registry is corrupt? There are several steps involved in how to diagnose a corrupt registry.