The registry has – in my opinion – always been the Achilles Heel for Windows. When first conceived it was only meant to be used by Windows and other Microsoft specific software. It was never meant to be the gluttonous pig that it has devolved into, but once developers discovered ways to store their own application’s setting in it there was nowhere to go but down.

While the jury is still out regarding Windows 7 there has always been this standing joke about having to do a fresh install of Windows every six months or so because how unresponsive it could be. This isn’t a problem cause completely by the operating system itself but rather by all the crud that ends up in there from other applications.

It is also a problem that is exasperated by lazy developers who don’t include simple registry clean up routines in their uninstalls for their applications. So this means that after time, especially if you like checking out a lot of programs, the registry can grow to almost unmanageable size.

There’s been a lot of discussion over the years, mostly among power users and