One of the Windows components that optimization programs target is the registry which is essentially the "brain" of Windows. Because of the danger associated with this, I very seldom touch my registry and I never run registry cleaners.I know there are claims that cleaning your registry will improve your system performance but I don't really see this. To me, the benefit of potentially gaining a few blinks of an eye in speed is not worth the risk of potentially hosing your entire installation. I am not the only one who thinks this, Bill Pytlovany (the guy who develops WinPatrol) has some thoughts on this as well.CCleaner is popular among a lot of our readers and I know it offers a registry cleaner. Do you use a registry cleaner and if so can you really tell a difference?