Jon said:
Actually that's incorrect. An application can easily, and often does,
ask for all values contained within a particular key (eg a set of
folder paths), without knowing beforehand the number of entries it
will retrieve back. If it retrieves and processes 6000, then this
will necessarily take longer than if it retrieves and processes 20.
Simple. It aint rocket science.
Now if it so happens that a proportion, or even a majority, of those
6000 are superfluous invalid entries, then this is an example of
where a registry cleaner can save the day.
You are deliberately trying to mislead the readers. An application may
read all the values in in the key(s) that it owns, it doesn't read keys
for other programs and it wouldn't read a whole hive like the software
hive for example. An application like Lotus Smart Suite for example
wouldn't read the Microsoft Office or the Mozilla Thunderbird keys, it
reads the keys for its own application and those in the current user
hive which concerns it. Although it is conceivably possible that some
massive application might have a whopping 6000 registry values I
personally don't know of any such applications, this made up bogus and
large number of entries is another one of these attempts to mislead
readers and to make them believe that a few errant entries in the
registry hurts performance. These kinds of exaggerations and bogus
claims are often made by those who push the need for registry cleaners
or those who otherwise believe that these cleaners are useful. And for
all it's worth few of these useless cleaners would ever find such a
large number of invalid entries in the registry. Registry cleaners are
next to utterly useless and for most part they create more harm than
good. The purposed non existent benefits claimed by the vendors and fans
of these programs are simply not worth the risk of the real damages that
these programs can and do at times cause.
John
