Clean garbage from your registry

Clean Garbage From Your Registry

Note: These methods are for 95 ONLY

METHOD 1
METHOD 2
Compressing the Windows 95 Registry
Registry Links

FIRST; BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY.
NOTE: This works on most systems. In my personal experience, and others that I know of it works 90% of the time. If your computer locks up during the process, or does not show 100% done from "Real Mode Dos", yet stops: C:\WRP>RESTORE. WRPV3.ZIP is the Best and easiest Registry Backup/Restore I've Seen. Download HERE
Install and backup. This is a well written batch file driven bakup and restore, so it writes nothing to your system. Far better than Microsofts URU.

Registry keeps deleted data too. It acts simmilar like MSDOS undelete. The data remains in registry but it is not visible to you. So we use regedit to export only visible data and than rebuild registry from that data. (it helps us get rid of unwanted data). Here's the procedure:

1. Make backup copies of system.dat (and system.da0) and user.dat (user.da0). Be carefull, if you use multiple user profiles than your user.dat is located in \WINDOWS\Profiles\user_name\USER.DAT, system dat is always in \windows.
If you have multiple user profiles than backup both \windows user.dat (user.da0) and \windows\profiles\user_name\user.dat user.da0)

2. Do you have MS regclean? If not than download it from Microsoft. This is very important!! Regclean cleans registry from all the trash, dead links etc. so regedit can export it normally. I was not able to export registry untill I cleaned it with regclean! Run regclean and have it clean all the errors it can find. If you want to undo the actions regclean did in registry just doubleclick on result file regclean makes (looks like: COMPUTER_NAME XX XX XX (date).reg) That will import all the changes back to the registry.

3. Restart computer. When starting (when displays "starting Windows95" message) press F8 and select "safe mode command prompt only" (should be the last item in the list)

4. Go to \windows and enter: (I'll take for example that you have windows installed in C drive in directory Windows) In case you don't have multiple user profiles:

regedit /L:c:\windows\system.dat /R:c:\windows\user.dat /E myreg.reg

In case you have multiple user profiles: (change "user_name" with your user name, name of directory under \windows\profiles where your user data are stored ex. if your user name is John it will look like \windows\profiles\john\

regedit /L:c:\windows\system.dat /R:c:\windows\profiles\user_name\user.dat /E myreg.reg

Wait for regedit to return to command prompt. If it doesn't return to the command prompt, than something must be wrong!

5. Type (in c:\windows): attrib -s -h -r system.dat attrib -s -h -r system.da0 attrib -s -h -r user.dat (if use multiple user profiles do this in your user directory: \windows\profiles\user_name\) attrib -s -h -r user.da0 (if use multiple user profiles do this in your user directory \windows\profiles\user_name\)

Now DELETE system.dat, system.da0 (in \windows) user.dat and user.da0 (OR from \windows\profiles\user_name IF you use multiple user profiles, if that's the case, LEAVE those in \windows directory. DO NOT DELETE THEM, delete only those from your user directory. If you do not have multiple user profiles, than you need to delete the ones from \windows directory)

6. Enter (in \windows directory)

regedit /L:c:\windows\system.dat /R:c:\windows\user.dat /C myreg.reg

7. Reboot your computer (DO NOT START WINDOWS WITH "WIN"!!)

8. If any kind of error happens, you can copy system.dat & user.dat files you have backuped before, back to \windows directory.

9. Now you can compare sizes of old system.dat & user.dat and new ones (to view them in explorer you have to turn on "show all files" option in Windows explorer view menu)

METHOD 2

Here is a safe technique that can reduce the size of the Registry up to 10 percent. Make a backup of your system and especially the current Registry. Under Windows 95, use the ERU program located on the Windows 95 CD. Under Windows 98, run ScanReg by entering SCANREGW.EXE in the Start/Run menu. In Windows 95/98, open the Registry Editor and export the current Registry to a REG file, such as C:\MYREG.REG, by selecting the Registry/Export Registry File command with the All button highlighted. Restart Windows in an MS-DOS Mode sessi on. Or reboot, press Ctrl at boot time and select Command Prompt from the Windows 98 Startup menu. Enter SMARTDRV at the C: prompt to load the DOS disk cache. After the successful creation of the MYREG.REG export file, run RegEdit once more from C: as follows: REGEDIT /C MYREG.REG

This will recreate a new compact version of the Registry in the \WINDOWS directory.

Compressing the Windows 95 Registry

From Arie Slob:
http://www.windows-help.net/windows95/tune-38.shtml

Maybe you have noticed that the Windows 95 Registry files (System.dat & User.dat keep growing in size. Even if you remove programs from your system, the registry never shrinks. This occurs because the empty spaces in the registry are never compacted, and still take up space. Here is a procedure to compress your registry:

If you have the original version of Windows 95 you will have to download a new version of Regedit.exe (104Kb).

You can also check the version of Regedit.exe. To do this, start Explorer, change to the \Windows directory and find Regedit.exe. Right-click Regedit.exe and from the menu choose Properties, choose the Version tab. Here you can read the version number. The original Regedit is version 4.00.950, the updated version (the one you want to have) is version 4.00.1111

The original version of Regedit.exe will "choke" on certain large registry keys.
For more info see Microsoft's Knowledge Base Art. Q132064), "REGEDIT May Not Be Able to Import Registry with Large Keys". If you downloaded the new version, you have to do the following to be able to use it:

1.Copy the Regedit.exe to your \Windows directory (you should copy your original Regedit.exe to a safe place first)

2.Restart Windows 95 in DOS mode. This can be done by pressing the F8 key once you see the "Starting Windows 95..." and choosing the option "Command prompt only"

3.Type Setver Regedit.exe 7.10

4.You will receive a warning message that you "may lose or corrupt data, or cause system instabilities". This is normal, but the new version of RegEdit does work with the original Win95.

5.This will cause DOS to report version 7.10 to Regedit.exe, this is needed because the new version of Regedit.exe ships with OSR2, which is supplied with DOS 7.1, while the original Windows 95 ships with DOS 7.0

6.Now you need to restart your computer for the change to take effect.

If you didn't come here through the front-page, make sure to read the disclaimer first!

To compress your Registry:

1. First start by running Microsoft's RegClean utility. (For more information see Clean the Registry). You should run this probably twice, the second time it will give you a report that it has found all the errors that it can correct (some users might have to run it a few times before RegClean reports no more errors).

2. (Re)start Windows 95 in DOS mode. This can be done by pressing the F8 key once you see the "Starting Windows 95..." and choosing the option "Command prompt only"

3. Change to your Windows directory.

4. First backup the System.dat and User.dat files, type:

attrib -r -h -s system.dat
attrib -r -h -s user.dat
copy system.dat system.bak
copy user.dat user.bak

5. Start SmartDrive (Disk Cache) by typing Smartdrv C+ 10240 (where C is the drive containing your Windows directory and 10240 the amount of memory in Kb to be used by SmartDrive). This will speed up the operation considerably.

6. Export your registry by typing regedit /e filename, where filename can be anything you want to call it, lets say compact.txt, so you'll type: regedit /e compact.txt

This procedure can take several minutes depending on the size of your registry. We have seen times of up to 15 minutes for a registry of around 4.5Mb (without the use of SmartDrive). If you don't get any error message assume that everything is working o.k. If you encounter any error or you think that your system has stopped responding, just restart your computer.

7. Create your new registry by typing regedit /c filename, where filename should be the name you used in step 6, so in this example you would type regedit /c compact.txt. Luckily you'll see a percentage counter here, so you'll know it's working. This step won't take more than a few minutes.

8. Restart Windows 95 as normal, and if you're satisfied that everything is working correctly, you can delete the system.bak and user.bak files and the compact.txt file in your \Windows directory.

Registry Links

100 Registry Hacks
http://www.activewin.com/tips/reg/index.shtml

ActiveWindows - Windows Registry -
http://www.activewin.com/tips/reg/index.shtml

Compacting the Win95 Registry -
http://www.freespeech.org/patw/compact.html

CooLa's Windows (Reg etc) -
http://www.globalserve.net/~coola/Home.html

Dave W (reg hacks)
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~flibble/index.html

Doug Knox's Tweaks and Tips -
http://members.xoom.com/dbknox/registry/index.htm

John Woram's Home Page -
http://www.woram.com/

RegEdit The Windows Registry Editor -
http://www.regedit.com/

Registry Tips-Cerelli -
http://www.halcyon.com/cerelli/registry_tips.htm

User Options and the Windows Registry -
http://www.eons.com/registry.htm

Win95 Annoyances (Registry) -
http://www.annoyances.org/win95/registry.html