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What to use instead of NTREGOPT?


bizzybody

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I was going to post and let you know you have the last word, but then mine would be the last word, but I couldn't tell you this without posting, but...  :crazy:

 

-Noel

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I've seen registry size reduction of up to 25% with NTREGOPT on PCs that had gone a few years without any maintenance at all, not even keeping up with windows update.

 

What NTREGOPT does is what using the /E then the /C commands with command line REGEDIT did in Windows 9x. Write all the valid data out to a new copy of the registry then import that clean copy back, completely replacing the old.

 

If you set up a PC then never change anything, never uninstall software, never do anything that will leave orphan data in the registry, then there is no need to do anything to compact or clear out the junk.

 

Microsoft long ago should have had a rigidly enforced policy in Windows that uninstall of software would be required to remove %100 of everything the install put in. There was a 3rd party program for Windows 95 called Rosenthal Uninstall which did that. It monitored every software install and made notes of all files, folders, registry, ini file changes and everything else the install did. Then after uninstalling the software Rosenthal could be used to remove everything the uninstall didn't delete. But since it relied on a DOS mode TSR loading before Windows it didn't work with Windows 98 and later. :(

 

Microsoft should have bought that and incorporated the method into Windows. It would make it a much more stable OS, especially for people who are always changing the programs on their computer. System Restore does NOT compare to that because you can't use it to just remove one program completely and it often deletes files and software you do not want gone.

 

Last week something partially screwed up audio on one of my Win7 boxes. Some games and programs would play their audio, some would not. WMP12 would play nothing, nor would any other media player yet all the Windows GUI sounds worked, so did any audio and video on YouTube, Yahoo Screen and other websites. Turned out to be DirextX 11 had become corrupted and reinstalling that fixed it. Before I figured that out I tried to System Restore back to the last automatic checkpoint - it failed. Had it worked I would've lost some software installs and bunch of other things that had nothing at all to do with the audio problem.

 

Microsoft's way is not always the best way. :P

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I've seen registry size reduction of up to 25% with NTREGOPT on PCs that had gone a few years without any maintenance at all, not even keeping up with windows update.

 

What NTREGOPT does is what using the /E then the /C commands with command line REGEDIT did in Windows 9x. Write all the valid data out to a new copy of the registry then import that clean copy back, completely replacing the old.

Sure :yes:.

 

If you set up a PC then never change anything, never uninstall software, never do anything that will leave orphan data in the registry, then there is no need to do anything to compact or clear out the junk.

Well said. :thumbup

 

Microsoft long ago should have had a rigidly enforced policy in Windows that uninstall of software would be required to remove %100 of everything the install put in. There was a 3rd party program for Windows 95 called Rosenthal Uninstall which did that. It monitored every software install and made notes of all files, folders, registry, ini file changes and everything else the install did. Then after uninstalling the software Rosenthal could be used to remove everything the uninstall didn't delete. But since it relied on a DOS mode TSR loading before Windows it didn't work with Windows 98 and later. :(

Wait a minute :unsure:, are you telling me that since very few uninstallers actually remove 100% of the stupid info they wrote to the Registry, in some cases even a Registry "cleaner" or "optimizer" might be needed? :ph34r:

You do understand how this is the opposite of not only what NoelC believes, but also of what dencorso recommends?  :w00t:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171889-is-ccleaner-safe-to-run-on-windows-7-81/

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171889-is-ccleaner-safe-to-run-on-windows-7-81/?p=1078866

 

jaclaz

 

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Yes, stuff gets written to the registry that does not always get removed.  So what?  If nothing needs it, it does very little to harm your computing experience.  On the other hand, removing something that IS needed will do terrible things to your system.

 

People here are of the mistaken impression that extra entries in your registry are awful things that are just ruining your computing experience.  While it's easy to argue that a bloated database can't possibly perform as well as a contiguous, clean one, the reality is it makes so little practical difference that it's simply not in the top 10 list of things that you actually SHOULD be worrying about.

 

The whole "need a cleaner tool" genre is a case of people getting all upset about a mental image that isn't real.

 

There is a distinct lack of objective information here of the form:

  • On day xxxx day, before installing yyyy, my system's performance was measured to be zzzz.
     
  • On day xxxx + n my system's performance had dropped to zzzz - m.

 

Note that subjective feelings do not apply.  Humans are terrible at measuring relative performance.  Emotions, "what you've gotten used to", and even how much caffeine you have had all get in the way.

 

While there are certainly reasons Windows slowdowns can occur, most of them have nothing to do with the size or fragmentation of your registry.

 

I actually HAVE made performance measurements throughout the life of my Windows systems, and without having done any registry compaction / defragmenting / cleaning amazingly enough on all my systems the performance just keeps constant.

 

If you're interested in Ask yourself these pertinent questions:

 

  • Have any of my registry files grown to be anywhere near the 2 GB limit?  (the answer will almost certainly be NO).
     
  • Have I used Autoruns or similar to scour my system for (and potentially disable) the many, many "handy" programs added by virtually every application package to run in the background?
     
  • Have I examined the list of running processes to determine which are running but don't need to be (thinking along the lines of BlackViper).
     
  • Do I have sufficient hardware for what I want to do?  "Sufficient" is defined to be more than what's needed at any given moment since it is a general computing device.  If your system disk is more than half full, then you do not have sufficient hardware.  Systems struggling with too little space (RAM or disk) account for most perceived performance issues and trust me, defragmenting your registry on a marginal system isn't going to make it suddenly everything you wanted.

 

It may be that there are some nice programs like CCleaner that will help you keep your system tidy, but I caution you to be VERY conservative about letting some program try to decide what you no longer need.

 

It boils down to this:

 

  • Many people who don't have an in-depth knowledge of how Windows works tout "cleaner" applications as great.
  • Many people believe they have to reinstall their operating system regularly.
  • Noel knows a few things about Windows and says "cleaner" and "registry defragger" applications are unnecessary.
  • Noel never, ever has to reinstall his operating systems and enjoys consistent reliability and performance.

 

If you like running some software because it makes you feel good to take an active role in maintaining your computer, more power to you.  But if you want to espouse the virtues of a particular operation, let's talk about technical, objective performance measurements.  Opinions matter little; measurements matter most.

 

-Noel

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It boils down to this:

  • Many people who don't have an in-depth knowledge of how Windows works tout "cleaner" applications as great.
  • Many people believe they have to reinstall their operating system regularly.
  • Noel knows a few things about Windows and says "cleaner" and "registry defragger" applications are unnecessary.
  • Noel never, ever has to reinstall his operating systems and enjoys consistent reliability and performance.
It seems like Noel took back the note about the "substantial risk" involved in not following exactly and to the letter his recommendations, which is good :) and essentially the point on which there was not a general consensus, so once removed the two truisms:

  • Many people who don't have an in-depth knowledge of how Windows works tout "cleaner" applications as great.
  • Many people believe they have to reinstall their operating system regularly.
and the anecdotal evidence:

  • Noel never, ever has to reinstall his operating systems and enjoys consistent reliability and performance.
which is good to know, but irrelevant, what remains should be the "final statement" which boils down to just:

  • Noel knows a few things about Windows and says "cleaner" and "registry defragger" applications are unnecessary.
 

jaclaz

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It's as though you're trying to pick apart my position on this, while I just don't feel a need to warp reality to make you happy.  But maybe I'm being too blunt for you with my "rule of thumb" recommendations.  Try this on:

 

Running unnecessary things on the central database of your computer can increase the risk of problems.  Whether the added risk of doing what you like instead of what's needed could be considered substantial is up to interpretation.  We're all free to do what we like, but I stand by my statement:

 

You simply don't need to run 3rd party software on your registry.

 

Here's a year's worth of overall system benchmarks on my main Windows 8.1 workstation that's had daily hard use (24/7), and without my using any magic registry performance enhancers

 

Do you see any negative performance trend here?  I don't. 

 

AYearOfBenchmarks.png

 

As the user of this particular system, I am not finding it to be any less responsive or powerful - with one small exception - than it was the day I installed Windows. 

 

The small exception I'm compelled to describe for the sake of completeness is that Microsoft specifically wrecked performance of the Direct 2D subsystem with a Windows update in November 2014.  They briefly un-wrecked it in February 2015, then wrecked it again with the very next updates.  Note the radical changes in Direct 2D performance in November 2014 and February 2015:

 

Direct2DFalloffNov2014.png

 

I am not alone in seeing the above.

 

The above makes comparison of overall benchmarks since November 2014 difficult with those from before, because the one Direct 2D reading affects the overall score a fair bit, but here's the trend after that time.

 

RecentTrend.png

 

Factoring out the Direct 2D anomaly, which as far as I can tell doesn't actually affect anything I personally run other than the benchmark program, you can see my performance has not been degrading in the recent 7 months as well.

 

I also have archived results showing a similar lack of degradation with Windows 7 systems if you're interested in seeing them.

 

Let's have this discussion move to more objective measurements and results, shall we, and stop with the nitpicking of terminology.  I'm certainly willing to be educated by other peoples' actual results.

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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We're all free to do what we like, but I stand by my statement:

 

You simply don't need to run 3rd party software on your registry.

Well you can do the same (defragment or compact the Registry) without using 3rd party software,as in the given recommendation by the actual guys that wrote and support the OS:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2498915

 

Please note how the above (that may well be nonsense nonetheless) has been published by the good MS guys "in response to emerging issues", which should mean three things:

  • someone, somewhere, actually had performance issues that were diagnosed as being related to the Registry being overly fragmented or "bloated"
  • the amount of these issue reports was so large as to prompt the support people to publish a KB
  • the proposed solution does solve the specific problem

Try this on:

 

Running unnecessary things on the central database of your computer can increase the risk of problems.  Whether the added risk of doing what you like instead of what's needed could be considered substantial is up to interpretation.  We're all free to do what we like, but I stand by my statement:

In any case I repeatedly, over the years, did what you consider a substantial risk, on countless machines and installs, when/where I thought it was needed and NEVER had any problem, this is why I consider defragmenting a Registry (generically) and defragmenting a Registry using NTREGOPT (specifically) in my experience (having actually tried it) t as inexistent risk or no risk at all.

 

So, while in your personal experience defragmenting the Registry has never been *necessary* or *needed* there are "other people results" showing how in some cases this is actually *necessary* or *needed* and in any case, even when the defragmenting is not really or actually *necessary* or *needed* (or - as originally stated - not likely to produce in most cases a noticeable difference in speed/performance of the OS) doing it does NOT represent a "substantial risk" or a "risk" at all.

And here, JFYI, is an example of "other people results":

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqljourney/archive/2012/10/25/why-the-registry-size-can-cause-problems-with-your-sql-2012-alwayson-setup.aspx

 

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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So, while in your personal experience defragmenting the Registry has never been *necessary* or *needed* there are "other people results" showing how in some cases this is actually *necessary* 

 

 

Unfortunately, I see no results, just anecdotes.  If I were to see some objective data, I'd be likely to be more convinced.

 

How big are YOUR registry files, right now?

 

 

The article you mentioned has little to do with this discussion.  It is related to a specific condition on Windows 2003 Server, having to do with registry hives approaching 2 GB in size, and may only be applicable to a particular version with a particular bug.  I don't feel strongly compelled to expand that description to cover end users of Windows.

 

 

 

(that may well be nonsense nonetheless)

 

I believe you have touched on something there...  These are the same Microsoft documentarians who are to this day, via their "FAST PUBLISH" articles, describing Windows Updates that facilitate an "upgrade" to Windows 10 with the text "This update solves issues in Windows".

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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How big are YOUR registry files, right now?

EXTREMELY small, but it is not a good example/unit of measure, because not only I recklessly defragmented it, but before that I even crazily pruned it of unneeded parts. ;)

The article you mentioned has little to do with this discussion.  It is related to a specific condition on Windows 2003 Server, having to do with registry hives approaching 2 GB in size, and may only be applicable to a particular version with a particular bug.  I don't feel strongly compelled to expand that description to cover end users of Windows.

Well, it was a reported example that a condition actually requiring a defrag of the Registry may actually happen and BTW it is not related to Server 2003, but to a later version, most probably Server 2008 for the simple reason that SQL 2012 (which was the actual culprit) doesn't run on Server 2003.

 

Other examples (or anecdotal evidence, if you prefer):

http://carlwebster.com/the-curious-case-of-the-bloated-default-profile/

http://techierambles.blogspot.it/2014/12/the-system-has-reached-maximum-size.html

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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Not working. I got the runassystem and runastoken and the SetACL and the batch file to change the CLSIDs just sits there doing nothing after displaying its first line.

 

Have you got it working, after all?

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It' sounds like it's all for a "feel good" factor then. Nothing wrong with that. But until someone comes along with before and after measurements that show an objective improvement in system responsiveness or SOMETHING, I'm afraid I'll remain unconvinced.

-Noel

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Not working. I got the runassystem and runastoken and the SetACL and the batch file to change the CLSIDs just sits there doing nothing after displaying its first line.

 

Have you got it working, after all?

 

No. If I want to ensure the Registry is neat and tidy I'll do the WinPE disc thing.

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