Windows XP ad Vista registries are made up of 5 sections, which can think of as main folders, called hives.  These main folders are loaded with instructions the OS goes through sort of like a Saturday morning grocery shopper goes through a shopping list.  When some of the files carry instruction sets that are useless or inaccurate, it is said that the operating system has registry corruption.

Knowing what you know now about Windows registries, you can see how a corrupt registry could make a computer slow down as it runs inaccurate instructions and looks for information that is not in the registry at all.  You can also see how registry corruption can cause errors and crashes.

photo credit: craigemorsels

This post is in support of Registry Fixer an infofrmative blog about fixing slow operating computers and the roll of registry cleaners.

Registry Corruption