How many times since you purchased your computer have you seen an annoying message like – “blah-blah” .DLL file is missing or corrupt, unable to open file/program. I’ll bet that if you’ve had a nasty virus, hardware crash, software crash or something similar – you almost certainly have had an error like this at least once.

This comes down to the windows registry. In all programs and files there are files called .DLL files. DLL stands for dynamic link library. What this essentially is – is an area in the windows files which stores specific files that are commonly needed by more than one application/program. Before the DLL library was invented, you could only run one thing at a time, but with the “shared” DLL library more than one application/program is able to access the same DLL file at the same time.

You will no doubt have noticed that some programs and software’s warn you during their uninstaller that there is a possibly shared file that may be deleted as part of the uninstall process. It is usually best to leave these files intact as; speaking from personal experience, there have been odd occasions when other things have gone wrong after I’d fully uninstalled some software. Part of the reason why so many people get frequent .DLL errors is due to the fact that so many different things can be accessing and using the same .DLL at the same time – including spyware and viruses!

Here is a simplified explanation of what the registry is:
The registry is what the windows system uses to store hardware and software configuration information, user preferences and setup information on your computer. The longer you own your computer, the more errors and invalid entries your registry is likely to have. This leads to decreased system performance and an unstable computing environment.

How to fix minor errors yourself:
There is some limited help available to repair common errors – 2003/XP and vista have a built in scan and repair tool that you can utilize; provided that you have access to your windows CD/DVD. All you need to do is use the start/run function, type – “cmd” [without the quotations]. This opens up the dos command window. In the command console type – “help”. This brings up a list of dos commands.

On the left is the commands list and on the right is the description of what each command does. Go through the list and find – “chkdsk” type this into the console and it will begin checking the health of your files and hard-drives. It will give you an overview of its findings. It may recommend using the fix command if it finds errors – “CHKDSK/F”. Make sure to do this if it is suggested.

If your registry errors are causing errors in windows loading up, you can try the command –“fixboot” which will write a new boot sector, or if this fails you can try “fixmbr” which will write a new boot-up sequence. The chkdsk and fixboot commands will help to repair common problems, but be advised that this will most likely not solve the whole problem –especially if it is registry related. The only sure way to fix registry errors is to use a reliable and high quality registry repair tool.