Registry Fixers

[Obeechi]

Any favorites out there for Registry Fixers such Registry Mechanic, Uniblue, et...

You'd think Microsoft would invest in a company that would become the hands down best at this... since this seems to be a weak point in their OS...

[getwired]

Actually, when I worked at Microsoft, I asked one of the guys who worked directly on the registry what his opinion was on "registry cleaners"... he said that they were much more harmful than helpful - which makes sense to a large degree... Unless you're having some very specific problem due to an orphaned key, I would recommend not running any sort of cleaner/fixer/mechanic on it.

MHO...

[Obeechi]

So that sounds like fresh installs are the only way to go...

Reminds me how washing my car just takes the paint off...

[getwired]

Indeed... Though this is what I use snapshots for in VMware Workstation, to reset to a "gold master". I'm looking forward to more snapshotting in future versions of Fusion...

[Andreas_Masur]

Actually, when I worked at Microsoft, I asked one of the guys who worked directly on the registry what > his opinion was on "registry cleaners"... he said that they were much more harmful than helpful - which

makes sense to a large degree...

The funny part of the whole thing is that the registry itself has been poorly designed in the first place. Mixed with the stupid install/uninstall way of Windows, it is only a matter of time until the registry gets bloated and cluttered.

I wonder whether they also advise not to use their own registry cleaner they offered. Granted, it did only a basic job by cleaning and the real funny part was that you could run it twice and the second time it still found things to clean which it did not seem to find in the first run.

I think even Microsoft is not able to understand that stupid registry any longer...a classic approach with Windows...invent poorly design and keep it through ages...and yes...we still need the A20 gate...

Ciao, Andreas

[Obeechi]

Yeah bloated... too many sandwichs

So would you use a registry cleaner, or just do fresh installs all the time....

[Andreas_Masur]

So would you use a registry cleaner, or just do fresh

installs all the time....

Actually I have done both...I used their registry cleaner under Windows 2000...but in a half-manual mode meaning that I ran the tool then verified what it did by looking at the logs. However, at some point in time I started doing it on my own (in Windows XP) but as said...the design or logic behind the registry is kind of...well...why make things easy when you can make them unnecessary complex as well.

So these days, I usually start with a fresh install every 6 to 12 months. Although it seems to have gotten better, Windows operating systems still seems to have the tendency to slow down over time (mainly because of fragmentation of the hard drive) so I just got into the habit of switching back to an image with all applications installed.

Even better is of course that I can now use Windows on my Mac so I really need to go into Windows for development stuff and stay in Mac OS for the (bigger) rest.

Ciao, Andreas

[Obeechi]

I was noticing that Diskeeper lets you consolidate all the MFT into one area... they were saying that otherwise you have a MFT file out in the middle of nowhere, randomly put there, and then any file that needs to write in that area becomes immediately fragmented...

'switching back to am image'... I have no idea what you're talking about...

I guess this kind of indicates its better to put data on a seperate drive than programs, since programs won't change as often as documents... (isn't the registry mainly for programs... )

[Andreas_Masur]

'switching back to am image'... I have no idea what

you're talking about...

I was talking about a disk image that I created after I installed the PC for the first time. Install Windows, all applications etc. then create a disk image (= snapshot in Fusion) and store it for later use.

I guess this kind of indicates its better to put data on a seperate drive than programs, since programs

won't change as often as documents... (isn't the registry mainly for programs... )

Yes the registry is mainly for applications however, it also carries all system related data, user data etc. - everything that was splattered over 5 million ini files with earlier Windows versions (that's actually one of the reasons the registry is a whole mess). Whether to store data on a separate drive or location is in my eyes personal flavor as long as you keep your system consistent and do regular backups.

Ciao, Andreas

[getwired]

Yes the registry is mainly for applications however,

it also carries all system related data, user data

etc. - everything that was splattered over 5 million

ini files with earlier Windows versions (that's

actually one of the reasons the registry is a whole

mess). Whether to store data on a separate drive or

location is in my eyes personal flavor as long as you

keep your system consistent and do regular backups.

Ciao, Andreas

Agree with your sentiments in this thread, Andreas. The registry is a mess. Unfortunately, most operating systems care about three kinds of "state" information - application, user, and system. And under Windows, in the registry, it's a random binary pile of... goo. Application, user, and operating system configuration, preferences, and critical data all live in one of the registry hives on the system. It's an untenable mess. I keep an image (mine is in a WIM - Ghost or others could work just as easily) of a baseline sysprepped XP system that I can deploy into VMware whenever I need to start over.