Just as with any registry in real life, the Windows registry is susceptible to becoming cluttered if not maintained. After years of software installs , hardware changes, and program upgrades, the registry can be littered with unused keys.

• This is more closely comparable to the function of the StartUp folder, which is also unique to each user.
• If you browse through the Registry some time you’ll see it’s a giant accreted mess of non-standardized, overlapping information stored in random places.
• To access the uninstallation area you must first click on the Start button, then you will have to access “Settings”.
• Registry keys do not support the SYNCHRONIZE standard access right.

You can also see the missing operating system error message on a black screen and don’t know how to fix this since it will prevent you from accessing the operating system. Please read this page to know what happens and how to deal with it. Users can delete any files, including those in the registry, that are no longer required, or that may be done without risk. You can imagine how many of these registry entries exist if you consider that every operation you do on your computer makes its registry entry.

Fix 2: Delete the Contents of the SoftwareDistribution Folder

As with most Windows upgrades, you also have fixes for some of the most commonly reported bugs, therefore, a generally smoother performance. After the Startup and Recovery dialog window opens, go to the “Write debugging information” drop-down menu and select Small Memory Dump. Once the folder opens, go to the View tab at the top of the window and check link the “Hidden items” checkbox. Right-click on the Start button and select Run or tap the Windows and R keyboard buttons together. Go to Microsoft’s website and download the Windows Driver Kit for your operating system. It’ll be a large ISO file that you have to extract.

Then, you’ll be blocked out from the system, which means you need to restore the registry in order to access the OS successfully. Note that not all applications store all of their settings in the registry – some applications ignore it! So now we have the registry as well as configuration files. The Windows registry is one of the most interacted with parts of the operating system.

How to fix Blue Screen of Death error in Windows 11/10

However, it’s common and most PCs get corrupted frequently. Most users download media files, applications and access dangerous streaming sites and download tons of viruses and malware files on their systems. On top of that, leaving your PC’s registry unchecked for a long time may impact your PC’s performance negatively. But what are the signs that tell you about the malware corruptions in your system? To make you aware of the internal software corruptions of your PC, we are listing out the signs that indicate the corruption. Generally, Windows users aren’t supposed to make frequent changes to the Windows Registry. Probably, most of the Windows PCs run with standard registry settings and need no moderation in registry settings.

You can use the generated .reg file to import these changes with RegEdit when it’s needed. RegScannerRegScanner is a small utility that allows you to scan the Registry, find the desired Registry values that match to the specified search criteria, and display them in one list. After finding the Registry values, you can easily jump to the right value in RegEdit, simply by double-clicking the desired Registry item.

If not, new hardware may have been causing the error. In this case, it will be necessary to simply remove any hardware devices from the ports of the PC. If the problem persists, you can perform the Windows 10 reset operation to fix the blue screen error. Archived from the original on September 20, 2020.