Shop Vac for Windows Registry

[reboot]

This method is virtually foolproof for cleaning the registry, without the dreaded crashes associated with editing it.
Follow the instructions exactly!
Beware, this may take some hours to complete, depending on fragmentation of your HD, size of your vcache, size of HD, number of programs you have.

Shut down everything in the taskbar.
Do a thorough scandisk.
Do a thorough defrag.
Copy SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT to your root C: drive. (they're in the c:\windows directory)
START > RUN > REGEDIT.EXE
Select REGISTRY > EXPORT REGISTRY
At the flashing cursor, type: C:\TEMP.REG and hit Enter.
START > SHUTDOWN > RESTART in DOS MODE
At the C:\Windows prompt, type: REGEDIT /C C:\TEMP.REG
Wait several hours.
When it completes, type EXIT to return to windows.

Remember, this could take several hours to complete. Even if it seems to hang, leave it and walk away, it will work.
It seems to hang around 20%, and again at about 80%, this is normal, and it will continue!
Providing your system does not overheat, and crash, it will work.

When it's done, compare the size of your old user.dat and system.dat files (in root C to the new ones in the C:\windows dir. Remember that this is pure text, and a 2k difference is a lot of data.

If everything is working fine, delete user.dat, system.dat, and temp.reg from the root c dir.

Cheers, and good luck.

p.s. There is no software anywhere that will clean out the registry of invalid references like this method, and this is free!

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[Jomama]

Very interestiing RB, I understand exporting the Registry but then you say to also copy it, is this just a saftey thing as in 2 condoms?
Secondly, what is the /c switch, Can you expond on this a little more? Thanks


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I Survived the PC Mechanic Move.

[reboot]

The /C switch is to compare entries. It scans the HD for anything associated with the registry entry. If nothing is found, it removes the entry, then writes the reg.
The idea of copying the files to root c is to compare them later to see how much difference there is. It's just a recommended step, not really necessary, as the registry export function literally does the same thing.
As far as I know it will work on all Win9x versions, but I haven't tried it with Win95a.

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[dan3223]

Reboot, I did a search on my system, and I don't have system.dat or user.dat anywhere, and I'm running Win98

dan

[Tiretool]

I'm ashamed to say that after following your advice I got a difference of right at a meg in my system.dat file! Does that indicate that I keep a sloppy machine? LOL I got about 200k difference in my user.dat file. That was a great post! Thanks alot!

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Is it further to Chicago than by bus?
************************************
tiretool@rednecks.com

[dan3223]

I tried it (without moving the system.dat and user.dat file, which i don't have on my system) and it took less than 5 mins, i guess my registry wasn't too bad. i like that command a lot.

okay, i think this one might belong in the hall of fame...... what do you guys think?

[leethehund]

Thanks for the info ! Next question - will this work on win95 as well?? I have one 98 and one 95 system in the house so I would like to use it on both!

lee

[Carl Price]

I second the Hall of Fame recommendation.

Carl

[dan3223]

It turns out the System.dat and User.dat files have the atttibutes +s +h +r on my system. To make the file readable, type ATTRIB -S -H -R XXXXXX.XXX

[reboot]

dan3223 nailed it. They are hidden files, but you can find them by selecting "view all" in Explorer view folder options > view > all...

p.s. Thanks for the nomination...

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[reboot]

Tiretool: It means that you have installed and uninstalled a lot of stuff.
Imagine just how much text is in a 200k file! That's 200,000 keystrokes. Go figure.

BTW, I like the sig, here's another:
Do you walk to work, or take a lunch?

dan3223: 5 minutes is great. That means that your system is in good shape, and it's probably a fairly new install of windows. There hasn't been enough time for it to get full of crap.

BTW, I did this on a 1 gig Western Digital on a 486 DX, with Win95a. It took just over 17 hours to complete , but it worked like a charm! 1.2MB diff in system.dat, and 126k in user.dat

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[Ant007]

Hi People...

From what I've gathered, the process sounds great.

However, after perusing a bit more, 17 hours is a long time. Not that power outs occur in my area, I know that murphey is ALWAYS by my side.

What happens if the system is turned off accidentally, or power out, black out, brown out, meteorite, earthquake, or Hurricane Floyd decides to grace it's presence in OZ.

Thanks in advance!

Kev...*

Hmmmm... such a nice array of icons to choose from... ine mine mone mo....

[whist]

Great Post!

160K on System.dat
88K on User.dat

Might be my imagination but it seems like the ole Celery 300 is a little snappier too.

Many thanks,
Warren

[reboot]

If (God forbid) you have a power outage, or other interruption, just copy user.dat and system.dat back to the c:\windows directory, and restart.
This restores the original registry as it was before you started the process.

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[tomr]

I tried this on two machines. Interesting results.

First machine took 32 minutes and decreased system.dat by 4KB and decreased user.dat by 40KB. Not what I expected because the change is in inverse proportion to the size of the files.

Second machine (faster processor) took 20 minutes. INCREASED the size of system.dat by 16KB and decreased user.dat by 36KB.

To keep the registry up to snuff, every month or so I start with Regclean v4.1 then run CleanSweep's Registry Cleaner and finish up with Scanreg /fix. I'm hoping that this keeps the registry from ever getting in too bad shape. I'll try your system again too, Reboot. But how do you account for the increase in size mentioned above.

[This message has been edited by tomr (edited 09-20-1999).]

[Le Pacha]

I tried this on my machine over 10 times, at first the computer seemed to hang every time at either 26% or 86%, i would reboot and start all over again, the last couple of times, it actually worked to 100% but then it said it can't access registry bec it can't read c:\temp.reg and the original registry is restored. Any clue? I'm using Win 95 btw and I'm using the command prompt from the start menu not the restart in MS-DOS command from the shutdown menu, could it be that? I can't use the latter bec it doesn't detect my drives right!!! But yet i did try, same result.

[This message has been edited by Le Pacha (edited 09-20-1999).]

[pepicker]

ReBoot
Believe I know what I was doing wrong. It sounds like a great thing. Will let you know if I have any trouble. By the way, my E-mail address is two fold. lemIII@aol.com and nnil@ti.com.Keep up the great work. It sure makes it easer on us.

Linn

[reboot]

The odd time you will get an increase in file size. This is because the process found files on your HD that are not correctly identified in the reg. The process checks vxd, dll, etc. files, and if it finds a correct install with a reg error, it will write the correct stuff to the reg, so the program may be uninstalled correctly, or otherwise run with no errors.


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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[archie]

Here's my results.
System 1 - (clean install 4 mths ago): System.dat from 1.89mB to 1.8 and user.dat from 432kB to 248kB in 2 minutes.
System 2 -(clean install 10 mths ago): System.dat from 3.95mB to 3.71mB and user.dat from 1.08mB to 0.704mB in 1 hour and 50 minutes.
System 3 - (strange configuration - let's not go there) After completion (2 min), received the following message "cannot import c:\temp.reg - Error accessing the registry. The previous version has been restored."

While I haven't tested System 1 enough to make a fair evaluation, system 2 is noticeably more responsive and I plan to take out the "SHOP VAC" at the beginning of every season.

[Felix]

I also vote for the hall of fame. It's a cool one. I guess it's the only way to *really* remove M$ office from a system except from reformat.

[This message has been edited by Felix (edited 09-21-1999).]

[Toaster]

**Applause**
Reboot, now there be something useful.
Hall of fame stuff fer sure!

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Love, love is like pee`ing your pants, it`s warm and wonderful at first, then grows cold, then leaves you a mess.

[Tiretool]

I agree! I second the motion for this to go to the hall of fame. Do I hear thirds?

[COPEN II]

I have been meaning to do this for about a week now and haven't. I actually printed this up as soon as Reboot posted it so I could always have a hardcopy.

Anyway....I'll 3rd that nomination!!!

[fred]

Uh, well, I had a go too. I have been trying to clean up the registry on one machine, that was in a bit of a mess, for a while with limited success. It took about two hours, as you said Reboot.
I must admit, I was a little worried when the PC powered back up and said my video drivers did not work with the card, but that was corrected with another boot.
Well, I claim a poor position with only 320K off System Dat, but a staggering first prize I think for 412K off User.dat
I have started the process on another machine now! Six smile today!

[Le Pacha]

hey archie, if you ever find a solution for the problem you had with system 3 would you post it. I have the same problem with my only system here.

Thanks

[Felix]

Le Pacha and archie: Maybe boot into safe mode, let Windozze re-arrange things, reboot and then process again? Who knows...

[reboot]

LePacha, you didn't read the whole thing maybe?
I stated (more than once) let it go! It will work. Do not shut it down and restart, walk away, leave it overnight, it may takeseveral hours.
I also stated that you must start in DOS mode, not a dos box.

Archie, what's with the strange config that it wouldn't work? Using something like EZBIOS maybe ?


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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[Le Pacha]

reboot, I read your messages carefully, one question, do you leave it to go even if stays for over 30 minutes with the HDD led off all the time, never lights and the %counter is fixed to the same value all thru the 30 minutes? If you mean this I'll try it again. I never meant to say I used a DOS box, I used the "Command Prompt Mode" by using F8 during start up, and the reason I have to use this mode is in my question posted in the Win 95 forum last week with no good answers till today, may be you can help here it is -

http://www.pcmech.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000365.html

Cheers


[This message has been edited by Le Pacha (edited 09-22-1999).]

[reboot]

The only thing I can suggest is booting to a floppy, and running scandisk from there. It appears as though you have more problems. Extra partitions being reported, etc. Not good. This is an indication that your FAT is corrupt, and/or at least mis-reporting the right # of disk drives/partitions.
Try a reinstall of win98 over top of itself first. It would appear that you must sort out the other problems and be able to boot to DOS mode before running this.

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Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
http://members.cnx.net/reboot

[archie]

Allrighty Sir 'Boot, you twisted my arm,
it's a computer set up from an image on a client/server network - with pointers that, IMHO, are unavailable - the typical setup it is not.

My attempt to try it on another workstation with the same configuration gave the same results. Quite frankly I won't put further effort in getting this to work but I wanted to include those results to show that if the procedure fails, the OS isn't going to be caughing blood - it is forgiving.