About a year ago I purchased a Dell computer.  It worked great, but in the last month or two I have noticed a severe decrease in the performance and speed of the computer, and it crashes once every couple of days.  This is unacceptable, and so I did some research about how to fix it.  I was about to replace the whole computer.Little did I know that crashes could be caused by problems with the Windows registry.  The registry is where Windows keeps all the configuration files for programs, hardware, and user profiles.  I tend to install and uninstall a number of programs, so I can see how my registry would get cluttered.I tried a registry cleaner program and scanned the computer.  It came back with an obscene amount of errors.  Once I backed up the registry and went ahead and cleaned up the files my computer was free of errors and crashes, and ran much faster.