PCbanter

PCbanter (http://www.pcbanter.net/index.php)
-   Windows 7 Forum (http://www.pcbanter.net/forumdisplay.php?f=48)
-   -   Win7 Registry Size (http://www.pcbanter.net/showthread.php?t=1102410)

Ed Cryer December 4th 17 10:17 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
I recently noticed just how much left-over rubbish there is in my
system's registry. It's 6 years old, never cleanly reinstalled, never
treated with snake-oil.
I'm not aware of any problem with it; no slow-down detected.
I used regedit, exported it, checked file size and it's 273 MB.

How does this compare with other users? I'd like to know.

Ed

Mike S[_4_] December 4th 17 10:26 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
On 12/4/2017 1:17 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
I recently noticed just how much left-over rubbish there is in my
system's registry. It's 6 years old, never cleanly reinstalled, never
treated with snake-oil.
I'm not aware of any problem with it; no slow-down detected.
I used regedit, exported it, checked file size and it's 273 MB.

How does this compare with other users? I'd like to know.

Ed


I ran a powershell script and it reported 153 MB. w7 ult x64, been
running alittle over a year, Office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, several
browsers. I've cleaned it with ccleaner maybe half a dozen times.

$data=Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Registry -ErrorAction Stop
#Format the results and write an object to the pipeline
$data | Select-Object -Property
@{Name="Computername";Expression={$_.__SERVER}},
Status,
@{Name="Current Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Max Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize}},
@{Name="Free Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize - $_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Percent Free (%)";Expression={ (1 -
($_.CurrentSize/$_.MaximumSize))*100 }},
@{Name="Created";Expression={$_.ConvertToDateTime( $_.InstallDate)}},
@{Name="Age";Expression={(Get-Date) - (
$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.InstallDate)) }}

https://superuser.com/questions/3742...ze-of-registry

Ed Cryer December 4th 17 10:47 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
Mike S wrote:
On 12/4/2017 1:17 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
I recently noticed just how much left-over rubbish there is in my
system's registry. It's 6 years old, never cleanly reinstalled, never
treated with snake-oil.
I'm not aware of any problem with it; no slow-down detected.
I used regedit, exported it, checked file size and it's 273 MB.

How does this compare with other users? I'd like to know.

Ed


I ran a powershell script and it reported 153 MB. w7 ult x64, been
running alittle over a year, Office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, several
browsers. I've cleaned it with ccleaner maybe half a dozen times.

$data=Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Registry -ErrorAction Stop
#Format the results and write an object to the pipeline
$data | Select-Object -Property
@{Name="Computername";Expression={$_.__SERVER}},
Status,
@{Name="Current Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Max Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize}},
@{Name="Free Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize - $_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Percent Free (%)";Expression={ (1 -
($_.CurrentSize/$_.MaximumSize))*100 }},
@{Name="Created";Expression={$_.ConvertToDateTime( $_.InstallDate)}},
@{Name="Age";Expression={(Get-Date) - (
$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.InstallDate)) }}

https://superuser.com/questions/3742...ze-of-registry


Interesting.
I ran Ccleaner, checked with regedit's export again, and got 270MB.

Then I ran your script and got this;
Current Size (Mb) : 200
Max Size (Mb) : 2048
Free Size (Mb) : 1848
Percent Free (%) : 90.234375
Created : 23/11/2011 15:05:46
Age : 2203.06:34:40.5049752

That's not much above your size after one year.
I wonder which method is giving the true size.

Ed


Paul[_32_] December 5th 17 12:46 AM

Win7 Registry Size
 
Ed Cryer wrote:
Mike S wrote:
On 12/4/2017 1:17 PM, Ed Cryer wrote:
I recently noticed just how much left-over rubbish there is in my
system's registry. It's 6 years old, never cleanly reinstalled, never
treated with snake-oil.
I'm not aware of any problem with it; no slow-down detected.
I used regedit, exported it, checked file size and it's 273 MB.

How does this compare with other users? I'd like to know.

Ed


I ran a powershell script and it reported 153 MB. w7 ult x64, been
running alittle over a year, Office, Photoshop, Visual Studio, several
browsers. I've cleaned it with ccleaner maybe half a dozen times.

$data=Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Registry -ErrorAction Stop
#Format the results and write an object to the pipeline
$data | Select-Object -Property
@{Name="Computername";Expression={$_.__SERVER}},
Status,
@{Name="Current Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Max Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize}},
@{Name="Free Size (Mb)";Expression={$_.MaximumSize - $_.CurrentSize}},
@{Name="Percent Free (%)";Expression={ (1 -
($_.CurrentSize/$_.MaximumSize))*100 }},
@{Name="Created";Expression={$_.ConvertToDateTime( $_.InstallDate)}},
@{Name="Age";Expression={(Get-Date) - (
$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.InstallDate)) }}

https://superuser.com/questions/3742...ze-of-registry


Interesting.
I ran Ccleaner, checked with regedit's export again, and got 270MB.

Then I ran your script and got this;
Current Size (Mb) : 200
Max Size (Mb) : 2048
Free Size (Mb) : 1848
Percent Free (%) : 90.234375
Created : 23/11/2011 15:05:46
Age : 2203.06:34:40.5049752

That's not much above your size after one year.
I wonder which method is giving the true size.

Ed


They're just files in the file system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry

File Locations
--------------

...The location for system registry files in Windows NT
is %SystemRoot%\System32\Config;

the user-specific HKEY_CURRENT_USER user registry hive
is stored in Ntuser.dat inside the user profile.

Windows NT
----------

Sam – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM
Security – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY
Software – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE \___ largest files...
System – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM /
Default – HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT
(Userdiff – Not associated with a hive)

%USERPROFILE%\Ntuser.dat - HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Usrclass.dat - HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes

The later OSes seem to have a few additional files
implying journaling. This is an attempt to make
it harder to damage the files (due to, say, a dirty
shutdown).

So if you don't need information to the nearest byte,
about the logical size of the registry, glancing at
the files themselves will give you some idea. In the
ones I was just looking at, there wasn't much there.
I guess I'm not adventurous enough, as I don't think
I've ever seen a registry set that was out of control.
Maybe a SOFTWARE file that was 25MB or so. Which is
nothing, compared to what other people have got.

*******

And another set of registry files is located in C:\WINDOWS\repair.
Those are "empty" files, and are only good enough for tipping
an OS upright again. They don't have all your settings, so
they're not intended for any long term usage. You use a restore
point, to replace those when the system finally boots.

Paul

Ken Blake[_5_] December 5th 17 01:25 AM

Win7 Registry Size
 
On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 21:17:57 +0000, Ed Cryer
wrote:


I recently noticed just how much left-over rubbish there is in my
system's registry. It's 6 years old, never cleanly reinstalled, never
treated with snake-oil.
I'm not aware of any problem with it; no slow-down detected.
I used regedit, exported it, checked file size and it's 273 MB.

How does this compare with other users? I'd like to know.



Because access to the registry is random, that left-over rubbish
doesn't really hurt you.

Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.

J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_] December 5th 17 01:45 AM

Win7 Registry Size
 
In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.


But 5 or 10 per cent of the available RAM on smaller systems, so (since
the registry is normally held in RAM), can be relevant in that respect.
(Though there's little you can _do_ about it - certainly a pass with a
"registry cleaner" won't make much difference to the size, and what it
does delete will often come back rapidly, consisting as it does largely
of MRU entries.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Life, liberty and the happiness of pursuit!

Rene Lamontagne December 5th 17 02:32 AM

Win7 Registry Size
 
On 12/04/2017 6:45 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.


But 5 or 10 per cent of the available RAM on smaller systems, so (since
the registry is normally held in RAM), can be relevant in that respect.
(Though there's little you can _do_ about it - certainly a pass with a
"registry cleaner" won't make much difference to the size, and what it
does delete will often come back rapidly, consisting as it does largely
of MRU entries.)


Well you fellows got my curiosity up about registry cleaners.
I have never used one, So having a 1 day old Macrium backup I decided to
have a look.

I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
377 MB.
Ran Ccleaner registry cleaner and it took 4 passes before it reported no
errors'
Exported it again and found the new clean size to be(drum roll) 383 MB!
So much for snake oil registry cleaners for me, It proved my point
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Case Closed.

Rene


Ed Cryer December 5th 17 02:04 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/04/2017 6:45 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.


But 5 or 10 per cent of the available RAM on smaller systems, so
(since the registry is normally held in RAM), can be relevant in that
respect. (Though there's little you can _do_ about it - certainly a
pass with a "registry cleaner" won't make much difference to the size,
and what it does delete will often come back rapidly, consisting as it
does largely of MRU entries.)


Well you fellows got my curiosity up about registry cleaners.
I have never used one, So having a 1 day old Macrium backup I decided to
have a look.

I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
377 MB.
Ran Ccleaner registry cleaner and it took 4 passes before it reported no
errors'
Exported it again and found the new clean size to be(drum roll) 383 MB!
So much for snake oil registry cleaners for me, It proved my point
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Case Closed.

Rene


Maybe Ccleaner has done you a favour. I've never seen it do multiple
passes, and I'd guess it was repairing something that might have been
about to crash your system. 6MB added to shore up a shaky wall.

Ed

Rene Lamontagne December 5th 17 03:39 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
On 12/05/2017 7:04 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/04/2017 6:45 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.

But 5 or 10 per cent of the available RAM on smaller systems, so
(since the registry is normally held in RAM), can be relevant in that
respect. (Though there's little you can _do_ about it - certainly a
pass with a "registry cleaner" won't make much difference to the
size, and what it does delete will often come back rapidly,
consisting as it does largely of MRU entries.)


Well you fellows got my curiosity up about registry cleaners.
I have never used one, So having a 1 day old Macrium backup I decided
to have a look.

I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
377 MB.
Ran Ccleaner registry cleaner and it took 4 passes before it reported
no errors'
Exported it again and found the new clean size to be(drum roll) 383 MB!
So much for snake oil registry cleaners for me, It proved my point
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Case Closed.

Rene


Maybe Ccleaner has done you a favour. I've never seen it do multiple
passes, and I'd guess it was repairing something that might have been
about to crash your system. 6MB added to shore up a shaky wall.

Ed


I dunno Ed, I have never used a registry cleaner and this was just an
experiment to see what happened but I always assumed they were supposed
to remove overburden.
This system has always been quick and smart and using this registry
cleaner doesn't seemed to have hurt or helped it any, I'm just very
surprised that it added instead of subtracting.

Rene


Paul[_32_] December 5th 17 03:56 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 7:04 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/04/2017 6:45 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Ken Blake
writes:
[]
Also note that in these days of a 1TB drive costing $50 US or so,
273MB is a tiny amount. It's a little more than a penny's worth of
disk space.

But 5 or 10 per cent of the available RAM on smaller systems, so
(since the registry is normally held in RAM), can be relevant in
that respect. (Though there's little you can _do_ about it -
certainly a pass with a "registry cleaner" won't make much
difference to the size, and what it does delete will often come back
rapidly, consisting as it does largely of MRU entries.)

Well you fellows got my curiosity up about registry cleaners.
I have never used one, So having a 1 day old Macrium backup I decided
to have a look.

I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it
was 377 MB.
Ran Ccleaner registry cleaner and it took 4 passes before it reported
no errors'
Exported it again and found the new clean size to be(drum roll) 383 MB!
So much for snake oil registry cleaners for me, It proved my point
beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Case Closed.

Rene


Maybe Ccleaner has done you a favour. I've never seen it do multiple
passes, and I'd guess it was repairing something that might have been
about to crash your system. 6MB added to shore up a shaky wall.

Ed


I dunno Ed, I have never used a registry cleaner and this was just an
experiment to see what happened but I always assumed they were supposed
to remove overburden.
This system has always been quick and smart and using this registry
cleaner doesn't seemed to have hurt or helped it any, I'm just very
surprised that it added instead of subtracting.

Rene


They make registry parsers.

https://github.com/EricZimmerman/Registry

And something to note, for the longest while (years!), I didn't
know what the registry was considered. Is it a database ? Or
is it a file system ? Someone finally declared it a file system.
And in that example, you can see the registry (for some reason)
supports the notion of "deleted objects". Just like a regular
file system flips a single $MFT byte to delete a file, without
actually cleaning up after it. I would have expected the registry
to be "compacted" at each shutdown or startup, to remove something
like that.

Which makes it all the more puzzling as to why your registry
file did not shrink. If a registry cleaner can "compact" the
file, it should shrink.

Now, can a registry have links ? I think it can. If you don't
handle a link properly, you could end up making two identical
copies of information. And that would be a potential example
of a way to expand the thing.

The registry can contain arbitrary objects. It can contain
binary blobs. You could store whole "regular files" in it,
if you wanted.

So all it really amounts to, is an "obfuscated file system".

The registry entries even have permissions, and you know
how pesky things owned by TrustedInstaller are. Maybe the
admin account cannot remove or alter them. How does a
registry cleaner deal with that ? Does it have the
appropriate token to deal with everything with permission
issues ?

Paul

Mayayana December 5th 17 04:11 PM

Win7 Registry Size
 
"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
| 377 MB.

As Paul said, the Registry is files. If you export
to .reg files you're creating a text-based record
that can be used to import that data again. It
won't be the same size because it's a text file
and the Registry is a database. In other words,
what you export is comparable to a CSV file.

Also, Registry cleaners usually focus on a few
things. Most notably entries under HKCR for COM
libraries that may be gone. There may also be entries
for uninstalled software. But those entries are a
tiny portion of the total Registry. They're harmless.
And in some cases they may be useful: If you decide
to reinstall a program later you might be glad your
settings are still there.

Sysinternals used to have a program to defrag
the Registry. I don't know if it still exists or whether
such a task would still be useful, but it seems a
defrag would make more sense than just removing
a handful of entries.




Rene Lamontagne December 5th 17 04:33 PM

Win7 Registry Size (Win 10)
 
On 12/05/2017 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
| 377 MB.

As Paul said, the Registry is files. If you export
to .reg files you're creating a text-based record
that can be used to import that data again. It
won't be the same size because it's a text file
and the Registry is a database. In other words,
what you export is comparable to a CSV file.

Also, Registry cleaners usually focus on a few
things. Most notably entries under HKCR for COM
libraries that may be gone. There may also be entries
for uninstalled software. But those entries are a
tiny portion of the total Registry. They're harmless.
And in some cases they may be useful: If you decide
to reinstall a program later you might be glad your
settings are still there.

Sysinternals used to have a program to defrag
the Registry. I don't know if it still exists or whether
such a task would still be useful, but it seems a
defrag would make more sense than just removing
a handful of entries.




Yikes! after reading Pauls post just for laughs after reading a few
posts in the NGs and playing an hour or so of a Half-Life 2 mod I
decided to see if the registry had changed so I exported it and checked
its size.

IT now reads 618 MBs!!!!

This gets weirder all the time, I will check it later again today and
report, this seems impossible.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne December 5th 17 05:09 PM

Win7 Registry Size (Win 10)
 
On 12/05/2017 9:33 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
| 377 MB.

Â*Â* As Paul said, the Registry is files. If you export
to .reg files you're creating a text-based record
that can be used to import that data again. It
won't be the same size because it's a text file
and the Registry is a database. In other words,
what you export is comparable to a CSV file.

Â*Â*Â* Also, Registry cleaners usually focus on a few
things. Most notably entries under HKCR for COM
libraries that may be gone. There may also be entries
for uninstalled software. But those entries are a
tiny portion of the total Registry. They're harmless.
And in some cases they may be useful: If you decide
to reinstall a program later you might be glad your
settings are still there.

Â*Â* Sysinternals used to have a program to defrag
the Registry. I don't know if it still exists or whether
such a task would still be useful, but it seems a
defrag would make more sense than just removing
a handful of entries.




Yikes! after reading Pauls postÂ* just for laughs after reading a few
posts in the NGs and playing an hour or so of a Half-Life 2 mod I
decided to see if the registry had changed so I exported it and checked
its size.

IT now reads 618 MBs!!!!

This gets weirder all the time, I will check it later again today and
report, this seems impossible.

Rene


Curiouser and Curiouser (Did Alice or the Rabbit say that?) :-)
Checked again, now back to 384 MBs.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne December 5th 17 05:37 PM

Win7 Registry Size (Win 10)
 
On 12/05/2017 11:23 AM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 9:33 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it
was
| 377 MB.

Â*Â* As Paul said, the Registry is files. If you export
to .reg files you're creating a text-based record
that can be used to import that data again. It
won't be the same size because it's a text file
and the Registry is a database. In other words,
what you export is comparable to a CSV file.

Â*Â*Â* Also, Registry cleaners usually focus on a few
things. Most notably entries under HKCR for COM
libraries that may be gone. There may also be entries
for uninstalled software. But those entries are a
tiny portion of the total Registry. They're harmless.
And in some cases they may be useful: If you decide
to reinstall a program later you might be glad your
settings are still there.

Â*Â* Sysinternals used to have a program to defrag
the Registry. I don't know if it still exists or whether
such a task would still be useful, but it seems a
defrag would make more sense than just removing
a handful of entries.




Yikes! after reading Pauls postÂ* just for laughs after reading a few
posts in the NGs and playing an hour or so of a Half-Life 2 mod I
decided to see if the registry had changed so I exported it and
checked its size.

IT now reads 618 MBs!!!!

This gets weirder all the time, I will check it later again today and
report, this seems impossible.

Rene


Curiouser and Curiouser (Did Alice or the Rabbit say that?) :-)
Checked again, now back to 384 MBs.

Rene


It's haunted. Have we had Halloween already ?

Â*Â* Paul


I think Ccleaner is misbehaving and lying to me.
Just to further the experiment I plugged in and booted a spare SSD with
a fairly pristine copy of Windows 10 with only 3 programs installed,
Ccleaner, Minitool Partition wizard and Macrium Reflect. The registry on
it reads 264 MBs, which sounds reasonable.
Now, back to my Half-life 2 game Mod called Downfall. :-)

Rene



Paul[_32_] December 5th 17 06:23 PM

Win7 Registry Size (Win 10)
 
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 9:33 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 12/05/2017 9:11 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| I exported the registry to a blank folder and checked it's size it was
| 377 MB.

As Paul said, the Registry is files. If you export
to .reg files you're creating a text-based record
that can be used to import that data again. It
won't be the same size because it's a text file
and the Registry is a database. In other words,
what you export is comparable to a CSV file.

Also, Registry cleaners usually focus on a few
things. Most notably entries under HKCR for COM
libraries that may be gone. There may also be entries
for uninstalled software. But those entries are a
tiny portion of the total Registry. They're harmless.
And in some cases they may be useful: If you decide
to reinstall a program later you might be glad your
settings are still there.

Sysinternals used to have a program to defrag
the Registry. I don't know if it still exists or whether
such a task would still be useful, but it seems a
defrag would make more sense than just removing
a handful of entries.




Yikes! after reading Pauls post just for laughs after reading a few
posts in the NGs and playing an hour or so of a Half-Life 2 mod I
decided to see if the registry had changed so I exported it and
checked its size.

IT now reads 618 MBs!!!!

This gets weirder all the time, I will check it later again today and
report, this seems impossible.

Rene


Curiouser and Curiouser (Did Alice or the Rabbit say that?) :-)
Checked again, now back to 384 MBs.

Rene


It's haunted. Have we had Halloween already ?

Paul


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 08:19 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 - 2006 PCbanter
Comments are property of their posters