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Puzzling Registry Size Issue


Dave-H

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But you can also export the whole registry to, say, RegFile.reg, then go to pure DOS (not a DOS box) and run:

smartdrv

regedit /c <path>\RegFile.reg

You'll get essentially the same results.

NB: The above applies to the registry *compactors*.

My 'system.dat' is about 12M, and I just tried the above. Unfortunately, the "regedit" step stopped at 74% complete (no progress for 30 minutes) and I was forced to reboot. In DOS mode, I observed that 'system.dat' was now about 9M. I then did a plain vanilla 'scanreg', which reported the registry corrupted and restored a backup copy. So it looks like the above procedure cannot handle a "large" registry either.

BTW, while I was able to find the Japanese 'regcon' package (version 3.11, file 'rgcon311.lzh') via the Internet Archive, the links to the English translations here are defunct, so I was unable to try this.

Joe.

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Hi, Joe! :hello:

I guess you've not been following the forum as you should... :whistle:

Rick just reposted some of those apps, including RegCon, a few days ago... :D

Am interested in experience and recommendations concerning "registry cleanup software for Windows ME." was not thinking about registry problems due to malware but just all the junk that Windows adds with time.

Much of what Windows collects is usage tracks. One of the best tools for those on 9X is MRU blaster.

As for destroying your system, you can avoid this by using TestRun by BB to make a test registry to work on. You can also boot to DOS and back up system.dat and user.dat to another location first. If you trash your registry, just restore them from DOS.

I'm not sure of the availability of either so I've uploaded copies of both.

In the thread I linked to earlier, the RegCon utility is good for compacting the registry. I've uploaded it here.

The translated registry docs mentioned are uploaded here.

Both are 7zip archives.

When you get the registry cleaned out, compacted, and optimized, the link in my signature describes using batch files that will keep it that way.

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Hi, Joe! :hello:

I guess you've not been following the forum as you should... :whistle:

Rick just reposted some of those apps, including RegCon, a few days ago...

Thanks, Den.

Unfortunately, time has been rather scarce lately. However, I did check that this thread hadn't been updated before posting. I'll be downloading those files shortly.

Also, the caution about the "regedit /c" technique still stands. I tried a refinement of this as follows :

1. Export the hives of the registry as separate files.

2. In DOS, start a new registry with "regedit /c hkcr.reg"

3. Add the other hives in turn, ie. "regedit hkcu.reg", "regedit hklm.reg", etc.

However, at "regedit hklm.reg", this error was produced : "Cannot import hklm.reg: Error accessing the registry."

Joe.

PS. I've now tried the English-patched 'RegCon' utility and unfortunately, this crashes with the error "SYSTEM.DAT: make sfx failure(32809)". I also tried the associated 'regstrip' utility, and this loads 'user.dat' OK but fails on 'system.dat' (gets part way through, so it looks like a size issue). So, no joy with these utilities by 'haltz'.

I also downloaded but can't use the "TestRun by BB" utility, since that is hardcoded for Windows installations on drive C: (whereas mine is on drive E:).

BTW 'scanreg' and Norton WinDoctor (1998 vintage) both say my registry is OK.

Edited by jds
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The one thing that still gets me about all this is that MS have always maintained that there is no size limit on the registry in Windows 98 (as I believe there was in Windows 95.)

From my experience, and others, in certain circumstances this is just not true, because of the 16MB memory limitation on start-up, which unbelievably still seems to apply on Windows 2000 as well!

:)

There is no 16MB limitation on the Registry size. I just tested an 18MB Registry. The 16MB limit occurs when the Registry and/or Gigabit Ethernet Drivers take up too much of the lowest 16MB of Physical RAM. I added the /M Patch to my RAM Limitation Patch to insure that this did not happen regardless of Registry Size or type of Ethernet.

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There is no 16MB limitation on the Registry size. I just tested an 18MB Registry. The 16MB limit occurs when the Registry and/or Gigabit Ethernet Drivers take up too much of the lowest 16MB of Physical RAM. I added the /M Patch to my RAM Limitation Patch to insure that this did not happen regardless of Registry Size or type of Ethernet.

Do the MS 'scanreg' and 'regedit' DOS tools work properly for you with such large registries?

I've found (per above) that 'regedit' does not. As for 'scanreg', it seems happy to backup, restore and "vanilla test" large registries, although I haven't been brave enough to try "scanreg /fix" since my registry has grown beyond the 8M mark that is mentioned earlier in this thread.

Joe.

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The one thing that still gets me about all this is that MS have always maintained that there is no size limit on the registry in Windows 98 (as I believe there was in Windows 95.)

From my experience, and others, in certain circumstances this is just not true, because of the 16MB memory limitation on start-up, which unbelievably still seems to apply on Windows 2000 as well!

:)

There is no 16MB limitation on the Registry size. I just tested an 18MB Registry. The 16MB limit occurs when the Registry and/or Gigabit Ethernet Drivers take up too much of the lowest 16MB of Physical RAM. I added the /M Patch to my RAM Limitation Patch to insure that this did not happen regardless of Registry Size or type of Ethernet.

I wasn't expecting a reply to this after two years, but thanks Rudolph!

:hello:

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@RLoew: You talked about a 18MiB registry and the lowest 16 MiB... may I ask, just out of curiosity, at which physical address, even if variable, does Win 9x/ME start loading the registry? Just above the HMA?

@jds: IIRR, the demo version of the RAM Limitation Patch works for 10 min before rebooting... it might be enough, with the /M option, for RegCon to compact your registry (but do create a backup first, and store it safely, of course). BTW, how much RAM does your machine have?

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There is no 16MB limitation on the Registry size. I just tested an 18MB Registry. The 16MB limit occurs when the Registry and/or Gigabit Ethernet Drivers take up too much of the lowest 16MB of Physical RAM. I added the /M Patch to my RAM Limitation Patch to insure that this did not happen regardless of Registry Size or type of Ethernet.

Do the MS 'scanreg' and 'regedit' DOS tools work properly for you with such large registries?

I've found (per above) that 'regedit' does not. As for 'scanreg', it seems happy to backup, restore and "vanilla test" large registries, although I haven't been brave enough to try "scanreg /fix" since my registry has grown beyond the 8M mark that is mentioned earlier in this thread.

Joe.

Haven't tried SCANREG, but REGEDIT (DOS) does work. Extracting and rebuilding the Registry took two hours with SMARTDRV enabled. Without SMARTDRV plan on two DAYS.

@RLoew: You talked about a 18MiB registry and the lowest 16 MiB... may I ask, just out of curiosity, at which physical address, even if variable, does Win 9x/ME start loading the registry? Just above the HMA?

EMM386 and any XMS TSR's, if any, come first.

The Registry appears to be next.

The VMM32 Modules follow.

The /M Option disrupts this allocation, so that the Registry and VMM Modules are placed above the 16MB range.

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@jds: IIRR, the demo version of the RAM Limitation Patch works for 10 min before rebooting... it might be enough, with the /M option, for RegCon to compact your registry (but do create a backup first, and store it safely, of course). BTW, how much RAM does your machine have?

Hey, great idea! Unfortunately however, it didn't work. RegCon failed with the same error.

Do the MS 'scanreg' and 'regedit' DOS tools work properly for you with such large registries?

I've found (per above) that 'regedit' does not. As for 'scanreg', it seems happy to backup, restore and "vanilla test" large registries, although I haven't been brave enough to try "scanreg /fix" since my registry has grown beyond the 8M mark that is mentioned earlier in this thread.

Haven't tried SCANREG, but REGEDIT (DOS) does work. Extracting and rebuilding the Registry took two hours with SMARTDRV enabled. Without SMARTDRV plan on two DAYS.

Interesting. So with 'regedit' it seems, YMMV. I can export the registry OK, but not create/import it.

Joe.

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Interesting. So with 'regedit' it seems, YMMV. I can export the registry OK, but not create/import it.

I did not try to Import anything, but I did create a new Registry successfully. It just takes a long time. As I noted, make sure you use SMARTDRV or you will be waiting days.

If it fails, there may be other issues, not just size.

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@RLoew: You talked about a 18MiB registry and the lowest 16 MiB... may I ask, just out of curiosity, at which physical address, even if variable, does Win 9x/ME start loading the registry? Just above the HMA?

EMM386 and any XMS TSR's, if any, come first.

The Registry appears to be next.

The VMM32 Modules follow.

The /M Option disrupts this allocation, so that the Registry and VMM Modules are placed above the 16MB range.

Thanks a lot! :thumbup

I've got a much better mental picture, now, of how it works.

BTW, XMS TSRs are rare birds, indeed. I wouldn't even have thought about them here, had you not mentioned them.

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Interesting. So with 'regedit' it seems, YMMV. I can export the registry OK, but not create/import it.

I did not try to Import anything, but I did create a new Registry successfully. It just takes a long time. As I noted, make sure you use SMARTDRV or you will be waiting days.

If it fails, there may be other issues, not just size.

Hmmm ... the problem is with the import/create step of the procedure. So perhaps 'regedit' doesn't work any different for you as it does (doesn't) for me. And yes, it took over half an hour (estimate) to export the registry.

Joe.

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  • 1 year later...

I think this thread should be noted here :

Also, if anyone has any suggestions on how to recreate a large registry from exported REG file(s), that would make this thread even more useful. After all this time, I still haven't found any way to do this.

In theory, the most reliable way to make a registry devoid of wasted space is to export it to a REG file (or files) and then import the file(s). However, while the first part of this process works fine (albeit slowly), the second part of this process fails with large registries.

Joe.

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I'm not sure but it may be necessary to break up the import into multiple pieces.

I was able to build a Registry of 19MB by repeatedly importing a synthesized import file containing a key with over a megabyte of value data in it, changing the Key name each time.

I created the large Registry to test my RAM Limitation Patch's /M option that supports large Registries with Windows 9x.

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