Registry Compactor question

laserfan

Yesterday I used the Registry Compactor with "Reboot for better access" option, following which I received a "corrupt profile" error message from Windows. Not sure this was a PT issue (latest 986) but I'd like to understand this a bit better:

Our primary PC is a 32-bit XP with two user accounts, both with Admin rights: IDs are "Ours" and "Mine". When in "Ours" ID I ran a full Clean and Fix My Computer and then after a Registry Compactor run with integral reboot as I said up-front. On reboot it showed the several DOS screens including (I assume) compaction of the Ours hive in C:\Documents and Settings\Ours. Came-up to Ours Desktop just fine. At some point I logged-off and logged-on to user account "Mine", and later when I logged-off from Mine and attempted to log back on to Ours I got the frightening "corrupt profile" message from Windows and it booted me to a generic/rebuilt profile. Ugh. Thankfully, a simple PC reboot brought me back to the proper Ours profile and all appeared OK. Dunno that this had anything to do w/Reg Compactor but it is suspicious to me as I've never seen the "corrupt profile" message in many, many years of computing....

Today I logged-on to Mine profile and performed a Clean and Fix in this profile, after which I launched Registry Compactor but this time I used the "compact without reboot" option. It did a compaction, and asked me to reboot after, but I suspect from the ntuser.dat date/time that the hive for Mine did not get compacted. Just a suspicion, I dunno for sure. Now for my question(s):

I've used TweakUI to AutoLogon this PC to the Ours user account/profile. Is this going to mess-up my Registry Compactor action if I select the "Reboot for better access" option for Mine user account? Or should I temporarily change the "Autologon to Ours account" setting when I work with the 2nd Mine account? And which setting is correct-or-best for this scenario, "Compact without reboot" or "Reboot and compact when Windows starts"--or is this latter for use in W7 only?

Hoping someone here can help me to understand this better for this multiple user PC! TIA for any advice.

jv16

The number of user accounts or whether you use the auto login feature shouldn't make any difference to the Registry Compactor. In my opinion the "compact with reboot" is usually a bit better option to use because it gets a better access to the registry because no 3rd party programs are running on the background affecting the process.

laserfan

jv16 wrote
The number of user accounts or whether you use the auto login feature shouldn't make any difference

But it appears to me that it certainly does make a difference.

Once again I switched-over to the "Mine" account, asked for a Registry Compaction (using "reboot for better access") and after rebooting, whereupon I saw the DOS screens both before-desktop and then after-desktop (in the auto-logged-on "Ours" account), the registry for Mine (C:\Documents and Settings\Mine\ntuser.dat) had not been touched. Only after I changed the autologon and rebooted "manually" into "Mine" was the user hive compacted-and-backedup by PT.

By my testing it seems the only correct way to do a Registry Compact on my secondary account is to temporarily change the autologon and make certain to reboot-and-logon directly into that secondary account. Otherwise it doesn't happen.

laserfan

Oops, I must add that I now have a RegCompactPhase2.exe entry "stuck" in my HKLM_RUN registry location and get these two dialogs on boot:

When booting to account "Ours" I get the Ours.jpg Ours.jpg

When booting to account "Mine" I get the Mine.jpg Mine.jpg

The user profile S-1.......-1006 is the profile for "Mine" account, which is the one I'd done the RegCompact and "reboot for better" as I said above.

So it appears that the method I thought would work actually does not. :?

curt

My Windows Server 2003 PC has two administrator accounts. One is named "Administrator" and the other "Curt." I also get this RegCompactPhase2.exe entry "stuck" in my HKLM_RUN registry location. I noticed this registry entry there after I uninstalled an older version of jv16 PowerTools 2010.

laserfan

I have left my system alone, awaiting any reaction here, and the dialogs I posted above continue to appear whenever I switch accounts.

Curt you said "I noticed this registry entry there after I uninstalled an older version of jv16 PowerTools 2010"

That's the only way you noticed it? Doesn't the BTRC DOS screen appear everytime you restart or change accounts?

curt

I logged into my "Administator" profile and ran the Registry Compactor and restarted my PC and it messed up my profiles really badly. The XP Theme was gone and it was using the Classic Theme. I had to start the Theme Service in order to use the XP Theme again. You were right it really is a mess. Both of my profiles were in the Classic Theme. My server is really a mess right now. The default logon profile switched to "Administator" instead of "Curt." I use TweakUI so that helped fixing that. This is really BAD bug or problem. I'm not glad I ran the Registry Compactor on my "Administrator" profile.

I checked the Event Viewer and these are the errors I found:

"Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make you make to this profile will be lost when you logoff."

"Windows has backed up this user's profile. Windows will automatically try to use the backed up profile the next time this user logs on."

"Windows cannot load the locally stored profile. Possible causes of this error include insufficient security rights or a corrupt local profile. If this problem persists, contact your network administrator."

"Windows was unable to load the registry. This is often caused by insufficient memory or insufficient security rights."

"DETAIL - The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. for C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\ntuser.dat"

You said, "Doesn't the BTRC DOS screen appear everytime you restart or change accounts?"

I'm not having that problem thank God!!

redseujac

Those "DOS" screens above are not unusual.

I don't have two accounts and I get those screens also for some hives which can't be compacted during reboot because those hives aren't yet loaded at that moment of the boot process.

Therefore one has to hit Enter to continue, so Registry Compact can try to compact those hives when Windows is fully loaded.

That's exactly what happens in my case. The hives concerned were compacted when Windows was fully loaded.

If that explanation isn't the right subject of your problem(s), please don't blame me... I only tried to explain the appearing of those "DOS" screens.

laserfan

redseujac wrote
...one has to hit Enter to continue, so Registry Compact can try to compact those hives when Windows is fully loaded.

That's exactly what happens in my case. The hives concerned were compacted when Windows was fully loaded.

Well, OF COURSE I have "hit Enter to continue", but it doesn't work, and the screen appears again over & over.

Curt sorry to hear your profiles got jazzed-up. At least in my case, while I DID encounter the dreaded "Windows cannot find the local profile" for the "Ours" account as stated up-front, at least it came-back after rebooting.

Hopefully jv16 is following this and can figure-out what's not right with PowerTools on PCs w/multiple user accounts. I will be glad to help/test in any way I can.

redseujac

laserfan wrote
Well, OF COURSE I have "hit Enter to continue", but it doesn't work, and the screen appears again over & over.

Sorry, I hadn't understood that hitting Enter to continue didn't work. I think that wasn't explicitely told so.

curt

I think you need to restart the computer after you use TweakUI to choose what profile you want to startup with Windows. This way you can be sure your logging into the right user account. Then you can use the Registry Compactor. I didn't do that.

The other thing is try deleting the registry entry in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" and also delete all the files in "C:\Program Files\jv16 PowerTools 2010\RegCompact" except Regcompact.exe.

laserfan

Sorry, we encountered an error while displaying this content. If you're a user, please try again later. If you're an administrator, take a look in your Flarum log files for more information.

curt

By default Regcompactorphase2.exe is not located in "C:\Program Files\jv16 PowerTools 2010\RegCompact" when you first install jv16 PowerTools 2010. I think you should try deleting Regcompactorphase2.exe and also the file named "hive." After this remove the RegCompactPhase2.exe entry "stuck" in your HKLM_RUN registry location. I believe your problem would be solved by doing this. I think it would be worth your while trying this. I think that's why the BTRC DOS screen appears everytime you restart or change accounts. Why don't you give it a try? It won't hurt anything. You could export the registry entry that's "stuck" in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" as a backup and just leave the file Regcompactorphase2.exe and "hive" in your Recycle Bin. You can always import the entry back into your registry and restore the Regcompactorphase2.exe and "hive" files from the Recycle Bin.

siliconman01

If you run the jv16 Startup Manager, it should show up in the list of startup programs. Just remove it via the Startup Manager

laserfan

I know I can easily remove the registry entry. I've just left it assuming a (so far absent) jv request to try something as a fix.

Hello jv16, do you still believe PT works properly w/multiple accounts?

curt

Delete the registry entry it's not supposed to be there. Then your problem will go away. That's not too hard is it? No one is going to fix that but you. jv16 PowerTools 2010 works just fine with multiple user accounts. Your problem is you won't remove the registry entry that isn't supposed to be there. Why won't you do it? No one here can help you if you don't do that.

redseujac

laserfan wrote
...Hello jv16, do you still believe PT works properly w/multiple accounts?

In the post above...

Curt wrote
jv16 PowerTools 2010 works just fine with multiple user accounts.

After reading that post and the explanation "Curt" gives, there seems to be no need for jv16 to fix something in the Registry Compactor. Just follow the advice "Curt" gave in his post above and remove the wrong entry in the registry.

laserfan

You guys aren't understanding me. I don't care a whit about the Registry entry. What I care about is the fact that PT doesn't work cleanly on a PC with multiple user accounts!

That it also "messed up profiles really badly" is not what I experienced, but clearly there is something amiss with jv16PT! :

redseujac

We do understand you, but the point is that PT will not work properly with multiple accounts as long as you don't remove from "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" the unneeded and wrong registry entry/entries (Regcompactorphase2.exe) you mentioned in previous posts.

Curt wrote: "jv16 PowerTools 2010 works just fine with multiple user accounts."

So, why don't you remove that registry entry which is the culprit for your troubles with PT?

If you don't try it, then sorry, we can't help you furthermore.

laserfan

redseujac wrote
So, why don't you remove that registry entry which is the culprit for your troubles with PT?

If you don't try it, then sorry, we can't help you furthermore.

redsuejac, I didn't put the "culprit" there to begin with, PT did!

So, you are asking me to start from scratch and run my tests again, and end-up in the same mess (or worse, Curt's where his profile was hosed)?

And what is "the right way" to do this, to select the "Reboot for better access" and make sure I log-on to Windows with the User Account from which I did the Registry compaction? Which, as you'd know if you read my posts, is what I did already and it didn't work?