Windows Vista SP2 Registry Fixer-uppers!

Currently I'm using Reg Clean Pro, has gone smoothly, run once a week.

I have searched the web from end to end and want to know: Are there ANY internal Registry cleaning/correction tools within Vista?

Thanks in adv for any suggs.

-ChrisCoaster

 

No.

Microsoft did, for a brief time, provide a registry scanner in one
of their products. That was a standalone package, not considered
part of the OS, and available by subscription (pay XXX per year).

But when Vista showed up, they could no longer maintain it. Too
much work I guess. Or too much damage. Take your pick.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...download/a2ddd634-c46b-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5

The reason why this distinction is important "Microsoft did make
a registry scanner", is for all the fanbois of registry cleaners.
They tout the fact that Microsoft made one registry cleaner and
provided support for it for a couple years, that registry cleaners
are absolutely essential. I don't buy it. I interpret the saga
as described above, as Microsoft discovering that this was
a support nightmare, and would only get worse when new OSes came
along. Too labor intensive, handling exception cases, fixing damage
when it is discovered, and so on. It's just the wrong kind of
solution.

Paul

 

____________
I've also heard that such third-parties as the one I'm using are allegedly "no better than snake oil", but so far Reg Clean Pro(which btw bears the MSseal of approval if that means anything) hasn't had any negative impact onmy OS or anything runnng on it.

-CC

 

I wish there were good tools for generating metrics for the registry.

Or even registry insert or extract benchmarks, for testing speed
changes.

A simple way, would be to drop down to the config folder, with files
like "SOFTWARE", "SYSTEM" and the like (which are the registry files),
and compare the before and after file sizes. Let's say Reg Clean Pro
removed 0.1 percent of the entries. Would the OS become 1/0.999 times
faster or roughly 0.1 percent faster for registry operations ? That's
how I rationalize registry cleaning. It's not "snake oil", it's "math".
Now, if you run it, and one of the five registry files drops
from 20MB to 10MB, *then* I'd be impressed. But as long as it
only removes a couple hundred entries, how much good is that
going to do ?

(Article on registry repair, will help you find the five files...)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545

If the registry is really damaged, it's not going to load at boot.

If the registry just has junk entries, they'll be parsed just
fine, and walked over OK. The only cost is traversal time, whatever
the algorithm happens to be. (I don't know how the registry is
structured, and what O(n) it has.) But if we assumed for starters,
a linear scaling with size, as an approximation, I really can't
see a couple hundred registry entries disappearing, making a
measurable difference.

And you can do the research for me, by recording the before and
after file sizes, on the five registry files. Some of them
are bigger than others (like perhaps SOFTWARE or SYSTEM).

Paul

 

______________

Finally, how would I get into some of the places you mentioned? And know what to look for?

Vista seems tighter buttoned up than the Pentagon!

-CC

 

There's a ton of ways to get in there. And a ton of ways
to be "denied"

What you can try, is go to the start menu, type "cmd" and
when the search thing finds it, right click and "Run as Administrator".

That opens a black MSDOS window.

Now, in the MSDOS window (running as administrator), you can
try the following sequence of commands.

c:
cd \
cd windows
cd system32
cd config
dir

The dir command shows file names and sizes. There is probably
enough scrollback on the command window, for you to be able to
see all the files in there.

That should put you in c:\windows\system32\config . At least,
that's where the registry is on a WinXP system. And checking
the file I keep with a listing of my Windows 7 laptop,
they're in the same place. This listing was actually generated
from Ubuntu, while looking at the laptop C: drive. I'll
bet Vista does it the same way, in the same directory.

C:\Windows\System32\config:
total 111016
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu 262144 2010-10-22 19:57 DEFAULT
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu 262144 2010-10-22 19:57 SAM
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu 262144 2010-10-22 19:57 SECURITY
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu 52166656 2010-10-22 19:57 SOFTWARE
-rwxrwxrwx 1 ubuntu 18350080 2010-10-22 19:57 SYSTEM

If you do something like

dir > output.txt

that will dump the directory listing into the same
directory, and then you can open it with Notepad
and copy/paste as required. That is, as long
as the permissions don't stop it. If it doesn't work,
you can try

dir > C:\users\account\output.txt

and try and put it in a user directory. Somewhere that you
do have permission to do it. (Replace "account" with your
real account name, like "chris" or whatever.)

Good luck
Paul