Registry: In Windows computers, an organized collection of data, or database, where programs’ configurations and options are stored. Since first introduced with Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s, it has considerably grown in complexity and amount of data it stores.

The question in the title is obviously a joke, but now that we’ve disambiguated the term,  a more pertinent question is, does the normal user need to do anything about it, preventive or corrective maintenance wise? A big number of users may have heard or read about “Registry Cleaners”, which are programs with the stated purpose of keeping the registry in good operating shape.

The short answer to the above question is: it is arguable. A conservative version of the answer would be that at best, the top “Registry Cleaners” have a limited impact in the computer performance, and more often than not, they’re considered “snake oil”, in that the promoted benefits of such cleaners might be inaccurately high in modern Windows based computers.

To complicate matters, a number of fake programs claim to be registry cleaners while being actually malicious,  and utilize a combination of scare tactics and social engineering to confuse the uninitiated into allowing it to run or paying for the “premium” version to correct all the “errors” found in a scam, err, scan.

Make no mistake: The registry is a KEY element in a Windows based computer, and severe corruption of it can cause the computer to not work at all, and it’s one of the items backed up by mechanisms like System Restore, protected by some high end security suites to avoid changes that can affect the computer adversely, and, in some cases, careful and guided cleanup operations can be beneficial for the optimum running of the system. But it is doubtful that the average Registry Cleaner will have a significant positive impact in the registry and therefore the computer.