I'm about to try one of those Registry cleaners that are supposed to
eliminate obsolete entries in the Registry (which, I'm told, is one
of the causes of sluggishness).

I just thought, out of curiosity, that I'd first see how much space
the Registry currently occupies, and then check it again after using
the cleaner.

Is there a feature in Windows XP Pro that tells you the Registry size,
or is there a free program that does that ?

Inline

wylbur37 wrote:

That was true with the DOS versions of windows.


Are you prepared to reload the operating system?

I can't answer your question about determining the size of your registry. But
I would advise you to be very careful about using a registry cleaner. There
have been several posts here about people having problems after using
registry cleaners.
Be sure to back up your registry first.

Also, several people with more experience and expertise than I have,
maintain that there is no improvement in performance after using them.

Milt


"wylbur37" wrote:

Bob I wrote:
That's a bit over-scary isn't it ?

1. Get ERUNT
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
Backup the registry and let it do that daily anyway.

2. Run your cleaners.

I have done on 3 machines of mine regularly and on other machines with
never a problem. YMMV of course but many have had no such OS-reloading
issues.

P.

Before you run your cleaner export your registry to a file and check the
size then do the same thing after then you can figure the difference in
size.


"wylbur37" <wylbur37nospam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1142606956.471163.12160@i39g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...

Exactly as Milt said.

Registry backup:

[ERUNT] Registry Backup and Restore for Windows
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

[ERUNT Download URLs]
http://www.aumha.org/downloads/erunt.zip
http://www.aumha.org/downloads/erunt-setup.exe

[Installing & Using ERUNT]
http://www.winxptutor.com/regback.htm
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-on...runt/erunt.txt


--
Regards,

Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows XP Shell/User]
Windows® XP Troubleshooting http://www.winhelponline.com


"Milt" <Milt@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:AA723C8B-733A-4744-B1EF-A5FDB1E9E97D@microsoft.com...
I can't answer your question about determining the size of your registry.
But
I would advise you to be very careful about using a registry cleaner. There
have been several posts here about people having problems after using
registry cleaners.
Be sure to back up your registry first.

Also, several people with more experience and expertise than I have,
maintain that there is no improvement in performance after using them.

Milt


"wylbur37" wrote:

wylbur37 wrote:


My advice is *not* to do this. You've been told wrong; it's hardly ever the
cause of sluggishness.

Most registry cleaners work OK most of the time, and problems are rare. The
point isn't that they always cause problems, the point is that they *can*
sometimes cause problems.

Moreover, the registry doesn't need to be cleaned. Extra registry entries
don't hurt you. The risk of a registry cleaner hurting you (deleting an
entry you need) isn't necessarily enormous, but it's much greater than any
potential benefit it may have.


Think of it as something like russian roulette with a revolver with 1,000
chambers. Most of the time you get away with it, but it never helps you, and
if you get that one loaded chamber...For that reason, I recommend against
their use.


--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

CleanReg
http://www.cleanreg.com/

Will give the approx names of files and
total number of entries in the registry.
How far that is correct I do not know?
But unfortunately it is a shareware.





"wylbur37" <wylbur37nospam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1142606956.471163.12160@i39g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
I'm about to try one of those Registry cleaners that are supposed to
eliminate obsolete entries in the Registry (which, I'm told, is one
of the causes of sluggishness).

I just thought, out of curiosity, that I'd first see how much space
the Registry currently occupies, and then check it again after using
the cleaner.

Is there a feature in Windows XP Pro that tells you the Registry size,
or is there a free program that does that ?

wylbur37 wrote:

You were told wrong.

What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt is being caused by a registry error? If you do
have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it would be far better to
simply edit (after backing up, of course) only the specific key(s)
and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. Why use a shotgun when a
scalpel will do the job? Additionally, the manually changing of one or
two registry entries is far less likely to have the dire consequences of
allowing an automated product to make multiple changes simultaneously.

The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences. One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change. Having seen the results of inexperienced people
using automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user.

The only thing needed to safely maintain your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe. If you lack the knowledge and experience to maintain
your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry "cleaner,"
no matter how safe they claim to be.

Further, no one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that the
use of an automated registry "cleaner," particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good. There's certainly been
no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such
products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
or stability.



Why? Are you short of hard drive space? Otherwise, the size of the
registry is pretty much irrelevant; it certainly has no affect upon the
performance or stability of the operating system.



The WinXP registry can be found in C:\Windows\System32\Config\.
It'll be divided into several data files, such as Security, Software,
and System. The user-specific portion of the registry is stored in each
user profile, in a file named NTUser.dat. You could use Windows Explorer
to examine the sizes of these files.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? .... I know not what course others may take, but as
for me, give me liberty, or give me death! -Patrick Henry

CCleaner v1.27.260 is the Registry Cleaner to use.

http://www.ccleaner.com/

DSH

Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
If it's not caused by Registry "gunk", then what is your
opinion on what causes the sluggishness?

wylbur37 wrote:


Well, since you've provided essentially no information about the problem, I
have no opinion at all. I can provide only two guesses, based on what often
causes sluggishnesses in other people's computers:

1. Spyware infestation(s).

2. An accumulation of performance-robbing background programs that start
automatically with Windows.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

Milt wrote:
The Registry cleaner that I was considering using was NTREGOPT.
Have people had problems with that one?

And how exactly do you back up the Registry?
In order to restore a damaged Registry,
you'll have to successfully boot-up your system.
But you can't sucessfully boot-up your system
if your Registry is damaged, can you?
Isn't that somewhat of a Catch-22?

Nonsense Rampant from Chambers.

I've been using CCleaner as a Registry Cleaner, et al. Shenan Stanley
recommended it.

It DOES make my system run FASTER and smoother and I have had ZERO POINT ZIP
problems with it.

DSH

"Bruce Chambers" <bchambers@cable0ne.n3t> wrote in message
news:eaBV77dSGHA.4792@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...

<Codswallop Deleted>

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:52:15 -0700, Ken Blake, MVP wrote:

Your POV is too simple, IMHO. Dealing with the registry is a matter of
increasing quantity which sometimes becomes a new quality. The registry
and all running processes (system, programs) share a finite amount of
memory. Increasing the registry will either result in less RAM available
for other processes (Win2k and earlier) or in paging out some content
of the registry itself (WinXP). In either case, the overall performance
will decrease, when the registry grows considerably.

There are other problems worth to be thought about, too. Wrong entries
(especially orphaned entries of old system components) can cause
conflicts and instability, whenever an application just checks a
registry value and doesn't look onto the disk, whether a registered
(maybe OLE server) truly exists.

And there is just the effect of multiplication. Lets take a sample
like opening the Software branch of Control panel: The moment the list
of installed programs pops up, every entry gets checked on reliability.
I.e., the system looks onto the disk and browses directories. Which
in itself can take a couple of milliseconds, when a lot of programs
are installed. If the linked entry cannot be found, the search even
lasts a bit longer. *But* every file access on disk also fires up the
nowadays ever-present Antivirus programs. So the next time gets lost
inside a black hole called registry-related costs.

You'll find articles about that at MS:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro...e/distreg.mspx
| Eventually, the registry becomes bloated with items that aren't needed or
| that cause conflicts. Registry cleaning tools, such as regclean.exe, can
| help.

and on many other places, like:
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/200...t-of-life.html
| So it seems that Registry junk is a Windows fact of life and that
| Registry cleaners will continue to have a place in the anal-sysadmin¢s
| tool chest

Of course - changes of the registry pose a (sometimes small, sometimes
big) risk. That's why, backups are in order; and any changes should be
either understood by the person doing them or should play save if done
automatic.

BeAr
--
================================================== =========================
= What do you mean with: "Perfection is always an illusion"? =
================================================== =============--(Oops!)===

wylbur37 wrote:


Many of us here use and recommend ERUNT.



It depends on the nature of the damage. Sometimes you can and sometimes you
can't. It's because sometimes you can't that I recommend against using
registry cleaners.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson wrote:


In my view and my experience, any such effect is so small as to be
insignificant.



Occasionally (but rarely) that's true, and when such a problem exists, it's
best addressed with a direct registry edit, rather than using a registry
cleaner, which takes a shotgun approach.

I'm not against fixing problems in the registry. I against the shotgun
approach to fixing problems taken by registry cleaners, because my
experience is that they more often cause problems than fix them.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

You want your registry size.
Bring up Windows Explorer.
Go to your control panel and click System
On the tabs, click Advance (at the top)
Click the button to change your Virtual Memory
This shows Virtual Memory, but look at the bottom of this dialog. It tells
you current registry size and the maximum that you have it set for.

Does this answer your question as to Registry Size?

"wylbur37" <wylbur37nospam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1142606956.471163.12160@i39g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...

On 17 Mar 2006 06:49:16 -0800, "wylbur37" <wylbur37nospam@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Free command-line utility from the MS Windows resource kit - dureg.exe

<http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/dureg-o.asp>

"wylbur37" <wylbur37nospam@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1142613194.961948.250800@j33g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
Good advice. I just removed some unwanted entries from the registry, and
resulted in my system not being abot to boot AT ALL....just froze in the
blue welcome screen. Could not get at restore, safe mode, and of course
ERUNDT registry backup. Fortunately, I had a full accurate bootable clone
of my master drive which saved the day for me. I won't do that again.

What happened, is that I uninstalled Google desktomsearch, scanned registry
for occurrances of that, and deleted them. That did it!

Dave C.