Top Tip

An incorrectly edited registry can render your system unusable - see our seperate tutorial on creating a restore point to back up your registry if you're not confident in what you're doing.

Clear out unwanted DLL files.

In an attempt to speed up program loading and execution Microsoft Windows tends to keep .dll files loaded into memory even if the program that uses them is no longer running.

If you're struggling for system resources or memory then it's possible to force Windows to un-load these .dll files when the application exits.

  • Click Start and then select Run.
  • In the dialog box type in 'regedit' and click OK.
  • Using the explorer style pane on the left navigate to
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.
  • Create a new DWORD value called AlwaysUnloadDLL (note spelling and capitalisation) set the Value to 1 and all .dll's will now be removed from memory when a program has finished with them.

If you want to revert back, simply re-navigate to the DWORD value and either remove it or change its value to 0

As with all tweaks that involve editing the registry, please do not attempt this unless you're confident and have sufficient backups, incorrectly editing the registry could render your system unusable



This page last updated December 27th 2009 Bookmark and Share