many setup exe's in WindowsNT Compatibility Assistant Persisted

On a 2 months old windows 7 installation, I discovered that many setup.exe's are in a register compatibility mode:
HKEY_USERS S-1-5-(very long number) Software Microsoft WindowsNT CurrentVersion AppCompatflags Compatibility Assistant Persisted

There are other places in the registry for Compatibility Assistant, but these do not have any entries.
I have 64 bit windows and some of the programs are clearly 64 bit, others are 32 bit, but none are for the 25 year old windows NT.
See screenshot.

What to do with these entries? Delete all of them or some of them, or leave them (in case they are harmless). NB I got no warning that windows was doing this. Should I prevent windows from trying (and failing epically) to help in this manner?

Do you have any performance issues?

There is no reason or benefit to turning off Aero, just superstition. It will run better with Aero than without.

Work through the Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 which will go over the install thoroughly to find any problems.

bwog said:

Work through the Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7
Good list, thank you. It will have to wait till I have a whole day or so to look at windows, sorry about that.
There is no reason or benefit to turning off Aero, just superstition." Superstition, yes that could be true. (I see more and more advice that turning this off and that off in Windows may be not such a good idea as it used to be for earlier versions of windows. But that earlier advice was born out off distrust, not superstition per se.) I turned Aero off because I am suspicious about the catalyst driver, and my guess was it has to has handle Aero's effects.

Anyway, before I install the latest Catalyst, I would like to address the following problem:
Windows uses compatiblity to handle many problems it does not understand, such as a crash of a program it doesn't know, regardless of the cause it seems, and often without warning.
So this question is about what to do with these setup exe's entries in the registry (see the screenshot above)? Delete all of them or some of them, or leave them (in case they are harmless).

I would leave them unless you did something strange during their install.

Since you're curious then focus on the quality of your install and that it meets the Win7 standard which is perfectly achieveable and compiled in reinstall tutorial below

Try the display driver offered by Windows Update making sure you have installed all Important and Optional Updates. If that doesn't help uninstall Catalyst to install only the driver without its buggy bloatware. .

"I would leave them unless you did something strange during their install." No, I did nothing special during install, I followed the current advice not to disable windows features (except hibernation). I installed win7 and ubuntu on an ssd, made symlinks to a hdd, and use a monitor plus a tv. This took some time to install and prepare.

I am not ready to reinstall right now, since I don't know what I did wrong, or even if I did something wrong, but I will have a look at your guide.

I need some of the bloatware of the Catalyst driver, I use the Catalyst Control Center, and many features. I agree it bloated, it is about 0.5 GB! But that is what is offered.

Perhaps it is better not to mark this post as solved. Before this first post, I found solutions for other problems on sevenforums. Thanks for your help, it is much appreciated.

May I ask what feature you use in Catalyst? I'm taking a survey.

Also is there anything else you modify or disable besides the modern Hibernate feature which is perfected in Win7 and one of it's great conveniences?

The reason I ask is that often those who follow XP methods also change out a bunch of drivers that Win7 wants, or make other changes that affect performance in Win7 - which works perfectly as long as its not messed with.

The tools and methods which work best are in the reinstall tutorial. They result in a perfect install as experienced by tens of thousands of satisfied users we've helped here.

"Also is there anything else you modify or disable besides the modern Hibernate feature which is perfected in Windows 7 and one of it's great conveniences? "

I disabled hibernation, scheduled defragmentation, and Aero. I probably will use Aero again later, but may disable search indexing.

"The reason I ask is that often those who follow XP methods also change out a bunch of drivers that Windows 7 wants, or make other changes that affect performance in Windows 7 - which works perfectly as long as its not messed with."

I use drivers that come with the hardware, such as mainboard and videocard. The utilities that come with hardware are often unnecessary, and therefore not used.


" ... or make other changes that affect performance in Windows 7 - which works perfectly as long as its not messed with."

Are you trying to convince me to use a windows driver instead of Catalyst? Do you call installing a dedicated video driver "messing with Windows"?

Compatibility Assistant is a good example that Windows 7 is not working perfectly, it is a container solution for Windows 7 to handle many problems it does not understand, such as a crash of a program it doesn't know, regardless of the cause it seems, and often without warning.

I think that Windows 7 should track everything that is installed, AND use that info to warn the user if not everything is uninstalled (when a program is uninstalled), AND offer the user to uninstall those leftovers. This is only possible if Windows has a good dependency tree AND uses it. Uninstall is another example that Windows 7 is not perfect, and one that can lead to problems.

I've seen no problems here caused by what you mention. But where we once recommended Revo Uninstaller to clean out the registry better after uninstalls, there were enough problems caused by it that it isn't much recommended any longer here at the home of Win7, where most of its repair and install regimens were developed.

So it's unintended consequences that are most often encountered by futzing with these non-concerns.

As to drivers, Win7 is the first driver-complete OS in the installer and then quickly updated via Windows Updates when you enable Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) . It is the advancements made in Win7 which cause Win8 to not even involve users in driver installation. So I would run with the drivers Win7 provides in these ways before importing any.