How to optimize the windows registry?

[Ulaiphur]

In theory, the registry is just like an ordinary database that once data is entered in it, it doesn't fully remove it. As time goes by it increases its size over and over again. My logic states that even if you remove invalid data from the registry, its size will NOT decrease. So , now we are dealing with two issues: size increase and fragmentation.

How do we overcome this? How we correctly optimize the registry? I'm fed up with crap shareware applications that don't do a **** thing.

Please do not suggest potentially dangerous applications such as: tune-up, acelogix etc. They don't work and will never do.

Edited June 2, 2013 by AlexCeed

[Guest]

NTREGOPT http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

[vinifera]

well I use Wise Registry Cleaner

this program is always freeware (and no ads)

it both searches and cleans redundant reg entries (allows you what/not to remove, suggests what is safe/and not)

and defrags registry too

Edited June 10, 2013 by vinifera

[xpclient]

Exactly. Use ERUNT to revert to a previous copy if you think a lot of junk has accumulated. Registry cleaners are CRAPWARE and should be avoided.

[jaclaz]

Registry cleaners are CRAPWARE and should be avoided.

ALL of them?

What is the alternative, cleaning a Registry by hand?

Old related threads:

http://www.msfn.org/board//index.php?act=ST&f=19&t=111078

http://www.msfn.org/board//index.php?act=ST&f=19&t=68677

jaclaz

[vinifera]

they are not all crapware

and untill you try something don't comment on it tyvm

[MagicAndre1981]

registry cleaners are useless and improve nothing. Only when the registry is very large (over 1GB) cleaning improves boot perf.

[jaclaz]

registry cleaners are useless and improve nothing.

Ah well, then a lot of people have used them vainly all these years.

What about defragging it?

Only when the registry is very large (over 1GB) cleaning improves boot perf.

I would say that that depends on the storage subsystem, I had the impression that the time needed to load a file from disk was dependent on it's size and on the speed of data transfer the actual device/bus can provide.

jaclaz

Edited June 11, 2013 by jaclaz

[MagicAndre1981]

Starting with XP Windows only loads some hive and not the whole registry. So only in Win9x it had a perf impact. Users often do things which make no sense.

[cluberti]

Given registry access is done in memory and whole hives are not necessarily automatically loaded anymore, MagicAndre is correct - unless the registry hive is gigantic (1+GB, and even that doesn't take much on a newish system) and horrendously fragmented on disk ... and it's not an SSD), loading the portions needed into memory don't take very long at all during boot (perhaps a second or three). Also, given the hive as a whole is no longer loaded in it's entirety, "cleaning" it or compacting to clear white space is only going to give you back some MB on disk - it isn't likely to improve performance in a perceptible way at all unless the system is *really* old with a *really* slow 5400RPM or slower disk as the boot volume. In my experience, only then would "cleaning" the registry provide performance gains. Having duplicate entries in places could cause *application issues* if the app itself doesn't like such problems, but those are application stability issues, and it won't make Windows (or the apps running on it) go any faster in any perceptible manner.

As MagicAndre said, this has been this way since XP in 2001, and even Windows 2000 did a better job of 9x loading hives into memory so it wasn't really an issue there either. This is one of those nuggets of "legacy knowledge" that keep getting trotted out as a help when, in fact, it's at the least fairly useless, and potentially dangerous to system stability (I've seen registry "cleaners" totally break boxes), with no real upside that would be gained by doing so.

[bphlpt]

I guess in a way then that this is like when some folks think they need to "lite" their OS because it will run faster without all the "extra" stuff that they don't use. With today's systems speed, amount of memory, install memory options, disk size and speed, etc, the typical user is extremely unlikely to see any difference in speed, boot time, or stability, and is more likely to remove something that they will need someday. [Full disclosure -- I don't "lite" my OS, but I do mildly clean my registry (CCleaner). I realize now that it probably doesn't make any measurable difference, but it makes me feel better and I've never had any problems because of it.]

Cheers and Regards

[cluberti]

Well, it's always your machine - do with it what you will. As long as you know you're doing something purely for OCD reasons and you know the risks - it's your machine! If you want to clean the registry, do it. Just know that it doesn't really do anything measurable , and there can be risks involved.

At the end of the day, though, you have to do what you have to do, even if it just scratches an itch in your brain.

[HarryTri]

Advanced SystemCare Free also cleans and defrags the registry. I use it to clean the registry to have it, let's say, more tidy, the truth is that after the first time there are no many things to be cleaned, as for defraging it hardly makes any difference in size under normal conditions. The process is rather safe anyway if the application used isn't a crapy one, at least that's my experience- of course always something can go wrong, whatever you do in this world has an unavoidable risk, doesn't it?