Computer Problem?

[Nick]

https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner is excllent for clearing the registry.

Agreed, however the performance gain (if any) is extremely debatable. At a kernel level, we've done detailed measurements using VTune Amplifier + other tools and can see no benefit, other than a slightly tidier registry - performance is not affected - the hives do not fragment and CCleaner doesn't coalesce them anyway - unless you are thrashing the registry at an application level, which would be a huge misuse of the registry in anyone's book, "cleaning" it does nothing useful.

It may be of dubious value to occasionally tidy the registry, but defragging the disk (if it really needs it) and using CCleaner to remove all old temp files & cookies etc. is a good play - apart from anything else, it can really speed up backups by eliminating files whose existence is merely transitory.