Compacting the Registry

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J

JamesJ

When one runs Defrag does the registry get compacted? I have
a registry cleaner I run about once a month and want to compact
the registry also. This software doesn't compact it.

Thanks,
James
 
I've read comments on various NGs about not compacting the registry as XP
takes care of this itself and the procedure may cause harm. I migrated from
98SE earlier this year and used to use a registry cleaner/compacter every
month. I'd be interested to know others' comments about compacting/cleaning
the XP registry - or not!
 
[[The optimization
done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the
minimum size possible.]]

Get both of these...

NTREGOPT NT Registry Optimizer
ERUNT The Emergency Recovery Utility NT
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/

ERUNT [[Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to
make a complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the whole
registry (for example, no information from the "SECURITY" hive is
saved), nor can the exported file be used later to replace the current
registry with the old one. Instead, if you re-import the file, it is
merged with the current registry, leaving you with an absolute mess of
old and new registry keys.]]
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt

NTREGOPT [[Similar to Windows 9x/Me, the registry files in an NT-based
system can become fragmented over time, occupying more space on your hard
disk than necessary and decreasing overall performance. You should
use the NTREGOPT utility regularly, but especially after installing
or uninstalling a program, to minimize the size of the registry files
and optimize registry access.

The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch",
thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously
modified or deleted keys.

Note that the program does NOT change the contents of the registry in
any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive
(as the PageDefrag program from SysInternals does). The optimization
done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the
minimum size possible.]]
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/ntregopt.txt
 
When I used WinMe once a month I'd run I'd boot to command prompt and
run the command, I believe it was, scanreg /opt and apparently it would
optimizer the registry. But I think some aspects of the XP registry are off
limits
to certain types of registry scanning software. I don't know. I don't even
know how badly fragmented the registry can become. I guess the more
you clean it the more fragmented it becomes.

James
 
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