title: Does having a registry full of old stuff slow down Windows?
body: <p>I know this isn't strictly speaking a programming question but something I always hear from pseudo-techies is that having a lot of entries in your registry slows down your Windows-based PC. I think this notion comes from people who are trying to troubleshoot their PC and why it's running so slow and they open up the registry at some point and see leftover entries from programs they uninstalled ages ago.</p>
  
  <p>But is there any truth to this idea? I would not think so since the registry is essentially just a database and drilling down to an entry wouldn't take significantly longer on a larger registry. But does it?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> To be clear, I'm not looking for advice on how to make a PC run faster, or asking why my PC in particular is slow (it's not), I'm just curious if people who say "bigger registry means slower PC" are accurate or not.</p>