If your Microsoft Windows Vista keeps freezing up, take heart with the fact that you are not alone. You are one among millions of consumers who thought Vista would be the next best thing, one giant leap forward in solving all of Windows XP's glitches and quirks, only to find out that this new operating system is plagued with its own flavor of severe problems of its own.
So, what should you do if your Vista keeps freezing up? The first answer that comes to mind for most consumers is to downgrade / go back to Windows XP. For some people this may be an option. But downgrading from Vista back to XP may not be a viable option, because the process itself could be fraught with pitfalls and obstacles of its own.
So then the question is: Is there a way to stabilize the Vista operating system?
Yes there is. And it is not the answer that most people think of.
It is not the running of anti-virus or anti-spyware software.
It is not the defragmentation of the hard drive.
It is not the fine-tuning of any virtual memory settings or the clearing up of hard disk space.
The solution is one that is all too often overlooked:
Tuning the Windows registry.
The Windows registry is the master database that the operating system uses to store all vital information about every piece of hardware or software ever associated with your machine. Over time, the registry can become very large and bloated, and errors can start creeping up in the registry.
The remedy is to run a scan of your Windows registry for any inefficiencies and errors and to fix them.
I must disagree with the statements made in this article about malware & virus removal, deleting unneeded files, defragmenting, etc.
ReplyDeleteI have helped numerous PC users with their computer problems (including Vista, XP and Win7) and while cleaning the registry is ONE of the items on my checklist, it rarely takes precedence over removing virus infections, spyware or other malware. And it certainly will not help at all when the system is infected, the disk is over-full or it is badly fragmented!
My PC maintenance routine includes all of these actions as well as registry cleaning, but really cleaning the registry is one of those "putting the finishing touches" on the machine AFTER malware & virus removal and unnecessary files and programs have been removed, thus producing a good-working base on the PC.
Registry cleaning does help, but it is hardly an end-all.
And the final step should be a good, thorough defrag with a good, reliable third party program to ensure all randomly scattered file fragments and bits of free space left by all the above actions is consolidated so the disk is performing at its best.
Bill R TechSpec
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