Microsoft Windows is, by far, the most widespread and commonly used operating system out there. It provides all the features that both an average and advanced user might need from an operating system.
One such feature is the registry in Microsoft Windows. Everything that you do on your computer, be it installing an application or simply opening a browser, is stored as items in the registry. It’s sort of a database of what you do in Microsoft Windows on a routine basis and is meant to improve the user experience.
However, sometimes, a few files inside the registry become corrupted or start to malfunction. As a result, this degrades the user experience of the operating system over time. If you’re facing a similar issue, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will explain what broken registry items are and you can fix them.
What are Broken Registry Items?
Simply put, broken registry items are the corrupted or malfunctioning items in the registry that may degrade your user experience over time. Often, these items are the residue left behind in your computer whenever you uninstall or delete an application. They can become corrupted, as a result, and slow your computer down or cause errors. Therefore, it is important to delete them to prevent the issues that they cause.
How to Remove Broken Registry Items in Windows 10?
There are many ways that you can remove the broken registry items from your operating system – in this case, Windows 10. There are applications available that claim to do this for you, and save your own time and effort.
However, more often than not, they end up causing more issues than they resolve. Hence, it is better to remove/clean the broken registry items yourself to avoid these issues. Below, we’ve mentioned a few of the simplest methods that you can use to remove broken registry items from Windows 10.
Perform a Disk Cleanup
The Disk Cleanup feature has been in Microsoft Windows forever. It is incorporated into all versions of Microsoft Windows. Disk Cleanup is a convenient utility that allows you to remove any unnecessary files in your computer, including broken registry items. To perform a disk cleanup;
- Click on the Start button in the bottom-left corner of your screen or press the WIN key on your keyboard to open up the Start menu.
- In the Search bar, type “Disk Cleanup”.
- Open up the program called Disk Cleanup.
- In the options menu, select the drive partition that the operating system is installed in. Commonly, it is the (C:) drive.
- Click on OK.
- Click on the Cleanup system files option.
- Make sure that all the options are checked and then click on OK.
Run Dism
You can also use the DISM command in the Command Prompt to remove broken registry items. For this;
- On your keyboard, press WIN + R consecutively to open up the Run prompt.
- Once opened, type in “cmd” and press ENTER or click OK to open up the Command Prompt.
- In the Command Prompt, type the below-mentioned command exactly and press ENTER;
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
Conclusion
We hope this article helped you in answering your questions about what broken registry items are and how they can be removed from your computer. If you have any further queries, don’t hesitate to mention them below and we will respond to you as soon as we can. If you have any suggestions, do mention them below as well. We’d love to hear what you think!
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