Registry Defragmentation

rap33042 said:

I am not generally a great fan of Registry de-fragmenters since, in inexperienced hands, they can cause more problems than they solve.
That said, I'll dive in.

Registry Fragmentation is not the same type of fragmentation that occurs on hard drives.
Windows reads/writes to/from the registry many times per second.
It also reads the entire, bulky thing when it first starts.

If you're like me and try out a lot of different software, then the registry can become loaded with a lot of left-over kludge from ill-behaved programs that don't properly clean up after themselves.

Windows doesn't know a thing about kludge- it just reads it all in whether it's needed or not. This not only wastes memory but adds to the boot time as well.
In a worst-case scenario it can even cause some problems due to conflict within the registry itself.

On a fast machine, this won't be noticeable, unless, of course, there is a true conflict.

In any case, continual installation & uninstallation of software will leave 'holes' in the registry that take up unnecessary space and cause the registry to grow to huge proportions. Enter defragmentaion utilities.

What they're supposed to do is find the unnecessary entries and close up those 'holes' thereby creating a smaller more efficient registry.

This is great on the face of it. The caveat here is that inexperienced users don't know what is unnecessary and they'll end up allowing these utilities free rein- this can be dangerous and in some cases will result in Windows not being able to boot at all!

The bottom line here, I think, is to make Registry backups religiously before making any changes to the Registry.
It is, after all, the heart of your Windows Operating System and should be protected at all costs.

I backup my Registry daily and before any major software installations or if it is software that I am not that familiar with. Doing this has paid off on a number of occasions.

This particular software that I used to defragment the Registry backs it first but just to be safe I ran my daily Registry backup before running this software.

I do agree that a person has to know what they doing whenever they mess with the Registry. If they don't then they should not touch the Registry. I am comfortable using programs to clean and defragment my Registry but only after researching them and feeling comfortable that the risk of them messing up my Registry and computer are minimal.

Bottom line is as far as I can see. If you know what you are doing then cleaning your computer's registry and defragmenting it can be beneficial especially when it comes to eliminating potential conflicts and speeding up the computer.

This is especially true as mentioned above if you install and uninstall a lot of programs. It seems to me based upon my experience that updating software can fragment the Registry and leave a lot of junk behind in your Registry. A number of program updates like those for VLC media player go through and uninstall the old version before installing the update. VLC has had two updates in the last couple of weeks so I am sure that doing these updates has fragmented the Registry and left gunk in the Registry.

So if you use a lot of programs and update them like you should on a regular basis that will also fragment and gunk up your registry.

However, notice that I did not mention the software that I used to defragment the Registry because of the risks involved. Since I don't do this for a living I would personally never recommend a Registry cleaner or defragmenter software but I use them and they work great for me.

sreedhav said:

As Rap33042 said, the "registry" IS the heart of the windows body! Only a heart surgeon(cardio-thoracic) can deal with it! "My slogan" as far as the registry is concerned is "play safe"!

Actually your statement is incorrect.

When a person exercises, eats properly, doesn't smoke, keeps stress to a minimum then they are taking care of their heart. All a heart surgeon does is come in after the person neglected to take care of their heart and as a result it broke down.

Same with a computer Registry. If a person doesn't take care of their computer Registry then they eventually will need a computer technician to fix it when it breaks down.

I prefer to take care of my body/heart and computer and reduce or eliminate the risk and cost of a heart surgeon and/or a computer technician to fix what I broke by not taking care of it.

Registry files are basically protected text files that occupy hd space like any other file. I just backed up my entire registry and its 268 mb in size. Theres not much installed on this particular computer but if one has large programs, games etc., it could presumably go upto several hundred mbs.

AFAIK, reg defraggers (at least like NTREGOPT) remove blank spaces between reg files (like ordinary defrag). These spaces are created because of deletion of old keys due to software uninstalls etc.

However, its also a fact that the entire registry is loaded into memory at boot and all read/writes are to the memory and only later to the hard disk. So a registry defrag will not give you the performance enhancements of a hd defrag because the latter involves reduction of seek time in a mechanical process. It might give you a small gain.

However, most commercial defrags dont reveal their working methods- so if they are actually going around deleting keys randomly, its best to stay away from them. IMO, it makes sense to forgo a minor and somewhat questionable performance gain to avoid a bigger headache.

Bill2 said:

Registry files are basically protected text files that occupy hd space like any other file. I just backed up my entire registry and its 268 mb in size. Theres not much installed on this particular computer but if one has large programs, games etc., it could presumably go upto several hundred mbs.

AFAIK, reg defraggers (at least like NTREGOPT) remove blank spaces between reg files (like ordinary defrag). These spaces are created because of deletion of old keys due to software uninstalls etc.

However, its also a fact that the entire registry is loaded into memory at boot and all read/writes are to the memory and only later to the hard disk. So a registry defrag will not give you the performance enhancements of a hd defrag because the latter involves reduction of seek time in a mechanical process. It might give you a small gain.

However, most commercial defrags dont reveal their working methods- so if they are actually going around deleting keys randomly, its best to stay away from them. IMO, it makes sense to forgo a minor and somewhat questionable performance gain to avoid a bigger headache.

The gain that I am having in performance is not questionable. It is very noticeable and in my opinion significant, at least in my case

In addition, since as you wrote the Registry is loaded into memory I have noticed a sizable increase in my available memory as a result of the defragamenting of the Registry. I would say consistently well over 200MB.

I dunno why people get so emphatic about this subject.

If you are happy with what you did - that's great.

I think the others are trying to discourage the less experienced from playing around with the registry.