The Windows Registry – Leave It Alone

I saw a business the other day saying that they had pop up’s on their desktop saying they had a virus and that if they clicked it would be removed.

Their solution was to go into the registry to alter it so the pop up would not appear.

Their are 2 things glaringly wrong with this.

  1. One – they obviously have been infected and altering the registry will not get rid of the problem.
  1. Two – playing with the registry can be one of the most hazardous things you can do to a computer , especially if you do not know what you are doing.

You should always back up your registry before doing any alterations to it and ” hope” that if you make a mistake you will be able to restore your registry .

I am also not a big fan of registry cleaners as the supposed benefits of using them never seem to appear , snake oil seems a good word to describe them.

If your computer is that bad that you need to alter the registry it’s time to format your hard drive and reload your operating system.

Leave a Reply