A corrupt registry is a likely reason to reformat your hard drive. A bloated one slows down your computer. Do regular housekeeping to keep this file lean and accurate. Use a combination of registry cleaners to help weed out invalid listings.
If I only had time to use and download three; my choices would be RegSeeker, TrashReg and CC Cleaner for regular maintainance.
CCleaner Spyware free donationware, (free to use please donate if you are able). Advanced features to remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more... also comes with a comprehensive backup feature.
Easy Cleaner has a registry cleaner on it that has served me well. When I tried removing duplicate files, I ended up restoring most of files I deleted, using the program. Yes, some system files need to be in your system multiple places for your software to work correctly. The program does a good job searching for unneeded files. The registry cleaner part of the program has served me well, so far for Windows 95, 98 and XP
Glarysoft Registry Repair like others on the this list, finds problems caused by invalid entries, references and links in the Windows registry and provides a list of the errors found.
RegCleaner Looks for different unwanted registry entries than Easy Cleaner. Worked wonderfully when I ran it under Windows 98, but only sometimes runs under XP sp2, so this prompted a search for another freeware registry cleaner...
RegScrubber Cleans Windows 2000/XP junk registry entries. The publisher's homepage was down last time I checked so I've linked to another download site.
MV RegClean helps fix problems with the Windows registry that are a common cause of crashes, slow performance and error messages.
RegSeeker clears old start up menu entries, unused files and missing references finds different errors than the others. Harder to use than the others but finds more waste.
TrashReg Scans for and lists Windows Registry errors when the program starts. Highlight the entry to delete it. Tried manual mode only.
Smart PC Solutions Clean My Registry freeware cleaner and Fix My Registry both work fine. Download auto-installs a link to sell their shareware. You may want to delete that desktop link.
NTREGOPT NT Registry Optimizer for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista. Run this after running your registry cleaner.
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