How large is your registry?

[Damned Angel]

Got a customers system here with a 50.8MB registry (exported enire registry to the desktop and checked the file size). User is complaning that it takes a longgg time to logon (no $hit!). he's got 7 different users setup each with their own pesonal settings.

Are their any free tools you have found for cleaning up the XP registry or limiting the size of the monster?

[confus-ed]

Regedit & lots of time & coffee ... or tell him to upgrade no sure there must be something ...but to prune what he has ?

[TekkieFreak]

take a look at this

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=55939

I just had a similar problem. I went with RegSeeker, as it was the only free suggestion. I don't know much at all about the registry. RegSeeker found over 400 entries that it wanted to get rid of. I let it, and I immediately saw improvement in performance.

Can't vouch for the reliability, as it is only the first time I used it.

However, it fixed my problem.

[jitBob]

"How large is your registry?"

Its not the size of the registry its' what you do with it!

[DocPC]

http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-dow...cleaner4.3.htm

Been using that for quite a while now.....seems to work great.

[ringo2143z]

My registry is more than 70mb in XP Pro and i dont have any slow boot problems . There's a lot of programs on my PC so that might explain why.

I too use the cleaner that DocPC mentions (excellent program) and also Regseeker (however it caused probs with my bro's XP laptop) but they never remove much more than recent used file entries and whatnot. Perhaps there's a load of junk loading at startup or there's a network connection present??? That sure causes problems with me.

Out of interest, what size should the XP registry be on average?

[Damned Angel]

Just did a clean install on one of my test drives with the customers system, no drivers or other software installed yet, just service pack 1 (included in our image) and the registry is 22.2MB

Tried those reg cleaners, didn't help at all. I think I'm just going to call him and get him to approve a clean reinstall.

[CeeBee]

48,237,048 and growing...
Still I don't complain about speed. Win2k btw.

[BOHICA]

Got a customers system here with a 50.8MB registry (exported enire registry to the desktop and checked the file size). User is complaning that it takes a longgg time to logon (no $hit!). he's got 7 different users setup each with their own pesonal settings.

Are their any free tools you have found for cleaning up the XP registry or limiting the size of the monster?

I have a w2k box here for development, and its registry weighs in at 101.8 MB Thus, my thinking is the slow login may not be related to the registry at all.

I have seen slow, and I mean SLOW logins (2-5 min) for both XP pro and 2K pro on multiple occasions because of one very simple problem: Screwed up DNS on an Active Directory domain. This is especially true if the affected machine has a dhcp configured IP, and the DC on the domain is NOT the dhcp server. The fix is to manually add the DNS entry. Add the IP of the DC as the primary DNS server (TCP/IP properties) (Assuming the DC is actually running a DNS server, which it probably is if Active Directory is installed and running). The machine can still be dhcp configured from another dhcp server. Depending on the dhcp params, you might have to manually add the "Real" DNS entries from your ISP, especially if the domain DNS (DC) does not pick them up from a router, or already have them manually added to its own properties. I have seen improperly configured DNS foul up all sorts of things on Win2K and Win 2k3 domains (network neighborhood browsing to SQL Server performance.) Check this out before you nuke the box... it can save you GOBS of time.

If the machine is not a member of a domain, then this probably isn't it. One way to tell if a fouled DNS config is the issue is to try to login to the local machine only, instead of the domain if there is one. This will skip using DNS to find the domain DC. (The LOOOONG logins are because the login code is trying to lookup the DC name via DNS...and if it isn't there... it times out, which can take a really long time before it moves on.)

Good Luck!

BoH

[Damned Angel]

ad aware and spybot cut the reg size down to 38mb and the logon time down to 10-12 seconds. I'm still amazed that someone can completly foul their system up in under 6 months (bought last september).

[CeeBee]

Ok, I've used the free RegSeeker to clean and it went down from 48.2 to 47.9... no big deal. However I started getting errors in Visual Studio so I restored the deleted entries. I have to give my thumbs down for it.

[techs]

Mine is 48.9 mb on WinXp Pro. I have been running for about 4 months on the current install.

[flackt]

I've used regclean 4.1a for years, on all windows versions, without a problem.

You can no longer get it at microsoft but I found it HERE

[cookin chef]

76.8 mb on My toshiba p4 1.9 ghz laptop running winxp h.e.,

Yes, I use Ad-Aware, Spybot and regclean 4.1a and Norton WinDoctor to keep the registry clean.

[ringo2143z]

Ok, I've used the free RegSeeker to clean and it went down from 48.2 to 47.9... no big deal. However I started getting errors in Visual Studio so I restored the deleted entries. I have to give my thumbs down for it.

I've noticed problems with Regseeker on other machines/setups, but never on mine. Your's must be one of those machines. Either way, it has some additional features that mean it stays as part of my toolkit. I also check what it's getting shot of before letting it do the deed...not that I'd know what half the stuff was in the first place.