We all realise the importance of a registry cleaner in our computers. They are essential to in proper functioning of PCs working in environment like Windows. Since a registry is key, in holding up confidential data and other details alike, their maintainence is very much needed. Few things need to be clearly checked before buying a registry cleaning software. Here they go:

A) Excellent Backup and Restoring features:- There are many registry cleaner programs available in the open market. Most of these provide you with an option of a full backup for your registry. But there's a disadvantage to it. When you try to restore the backed up registry, you may have lost any changes made to your registry since the backup was taken. To address this case, all you have to do is to choose an advanced registry cleaner program which allows the selective backups of registry. On adopting this kind of programs, you will have the choice of selecting only a part of whole registry, to do the backup. So, it is advisable to go for only those programs that give you an option to do full and selective backup/restore features.

B) Technique employed for scanning:- Almost all available registry cleaners in the market, claim to find hundreds of errors in the registry. It is very important to know the scanning techniques each one of them to carry out their tasks. There are two most common methods that are generally followed by these programs. They are either Smart and Safe technique or Bulk and Deep technique.

The Scan and Safe technique uses a number of complicated algorithms in arriving at an error list from registry. Certain additional features incorporated within this technique ensures that the registry is thoroughly checked and only if an error is genuine is displayed. This technique displays fewer results owing to its strict procedure in arriving at errors in the registry.

Bulk and Deep technique runs through the entire registry and comes up with all possible errors in it. The main drawback with this technique is that even unknown entries are treated as errors and are displayed.

C) Defragmentation:- Mearly removing errors from the registry is not enough. If the remaining data is huge, fragmentation of files can occur. When they are removed later, vacant spaces could be left behind in their place. To ensue this does'nt happen, registry cleaner should have a good defragmentation feature.