RegCompact questions

laserfan

I've been having trouble with my XP Pro PC shutting down in a timely fashion and did some Reg cleaning w/build 1053. After I asked to Compact the registry and for the logged-on user I got this:

Hive: HKEY_USERS\....


Hive size: 15.41 MB
Analyzing a large registry hive, this can take a few minutes. Please wait...
Compacted size: 7.05 MB (Compression: 54.23%)
Error: Too large compression! Skipping hive for safety...

Hive: HKEY_USERS\..._Classes
Hive size: 732.00 KB
Compacted size: 360.00 KB (Compression: 50.82%)

Error: Too large compression! Skipping hive for safety...

So my questions:

1. Is there now no way to compact registry files i.e. no workaround for this "safety" feature?

2. What is RegCompact actually doing (or in this case attempting to do, as it does not complete) when "compacting"? I thought it might mean simply de-fragging the file on disk?

3. Is there any tool to check/assure the integrity of these files (again, I'm t-shooting shutdown issues)?

A final small question: why did I have to type the above here by hand? There seems to be no way to cut/paste the text from the RegCompact window, nor can I find the info in any jv16PT log once I've hit "Enter" in response to the "All done! Press Enter to continue." message.

rdtmk5

While JV16 has many great utilities, its registry compactor is generally not one of them. I highly recommend you Google 'NTREGOPT' and download and install this brilliant freeware utility. There is no better registry compactor anywhere at any price.

leonardo

laserfan wrote

I've been having trouble with my XP Pro PC shutting down in a timely fashion and did some Reg cleaning w/build 1053. After I asked to Compact the registry and for the logged-on user I got this:

Hive: HKEY_USERS\.... Hive size: 15.41 MB Analyzing a large registry hive, this can take a few minutes. Please wait... Compacted size: 7.05 MB (Compression: 54.23%)

Error: Too large compression! Skipping hive for safety...

I suggest you search the 'Beta testing' forum thread with the 3 keywords: 'safety' 'registry' 'compactor', that will give you several hits.

siliconman01

rdtmk5 wrote
While JV16 has many great utilities, its registry compactor is generally not one of them. I highly recommend you Google 'NTREGOPT' and download and install this brilliant freeware utility. There is no better registry compactor anywhere at any price.

I recommend that you read the FAQs on NTREGOPT before running it on a Vista or Windows 7 system.

http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/faq.htmhttp://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/faq.htm

abide.in.the.vine

I have used NTREGOPT for years and prefer it to the registry compacter in JVPT. I have found that to ensure NTREGOPT runs correctly to right click the shortcut and click "Run as administrator" solves the problem of not working in Windows Vista/7. Do this even if you are logged in as an administrator. I prefer this instead of disabling UAC.

laserfan

Leonardo wrote
I suggest you search the 'Beta testing' forum thread with the 3 keywords: 'safety' 'registry' 'compactor', that will give you several hits.

Well, sure I'd searched on this before posting but unless I've missed some specific discussion you wish to direct me to, all I've found is that a dec'n was made for "safety" to abort compactions given certain criteria, without any explanations that I can find as to what this means.

As I tried to state up-front, I suspect a problem with the user hive due to looong shutdown times. Indeed sometimes if I run UPHCLEAN on this system, it won't shutdown at all.

I suppose if the hive is corrupt, then "compacting" it will only make it worse, but if the long shutdown times and/or UPHCLEAN problems are owing to fragmentation, then maybe compacting will fix it.

Well I will try NTREGOPT to see what that does.

leonardo

Leonardo wrote
I suggest you search the 'Beta testing' forum thread with the 3 keywords: 'safety' 'registry' 'compactor', that will give you several hits.

laserfan wrote
Well, sure I'd searched on this before posting but unless I've missed some specific discussion you wish to direct me to, all I've found is that a decision was made for "safety" to abort compactions given certain criteria, without any explanations that I can find as to what this means.

I guess that only jv16 can answer the reasoning/logic behind the compaction safety feature.

laserfan

I did run NTREGOPT to no apparent ill-effect, and the ntuser.dat file was reduced by >half as expected.

Not sure yet if this fixed my problem completely but thanks to rdtmk5 for pointing it out.