I know defragging your HD does speed things up, but what about the registry?
Does it actually make starting windows/programs faster?
I've been doing a little reading up on this and there doesn't seem to be a consensus on this. Some say it's good while others say it doesn't make any difference.
What's your opinion?
Do you defrag your registry?
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
I honestly don't think defragging the registry will have a noticeable increase in speed, maybe nano seconds, but its undetectable to the average user. Normally the increase in speed is achieved by deleting unnecessary Startup Programs and adding new Hardware. Imagine if you were a processor working for 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, you would become tired! 
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
Yeah I didn't think it would make much of a difference.
Come to think of it, most website who were for defragging were either companies trying to sell their products or advertise it.
Makes you wonder...
Come to think of it, most website who were for defragging were either companies trying to sell their products or advertise it.
Makes you wonder...
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
In first sight, one would think that registry fragmentation would be a big performance killer, because perhaps no files are accessed as much as the registry.
On closer sight, it on the contrary is however one of the filesets least affected by fragmentation because:
1. The fileset is constantly accessed and relatively small, which means that the important parts will with high probability be cached in RAM.
2. The registry is not accessed sequentially, but instead in tiny random chunks. When an application is loaded, then many megabytes need to be red continiously - so if those files are distributed across the hdd, a lot of hdd-seeks are needed to load the desired data. With the registry instead, only a few bytes are requested at a time, and the chances are very low, that these few bytes are fragmented -> just one read needed.
On closer sight, it on the contrary is however one of the filesets least affected by fragmentation because:
1. The fileset is constantly accessed and relatively small, which means that the important parts will with high probability be cached in RAM.
2. The registry is not accessed sequentially, but instead in tiny random chunks. When an application is loaded, then many megabytes need to be red continiously - so if those files are distributed across the hdd, a lot of hdd-seeks are needed to load the desired data. With the registry instead, only a few bytes are requested at a time, and the chances are very low, that these few bytes are fragmented -> just one read needed.
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
That makes sense, registry entries look just like txt lines. I can't imagine that would take anytime at all to read a few bytes.
Also it seems rather risky to be tinkering with the registry, being an important part of windows and all. I know I've had some problems with varies registry cleaners that killed off keyboard/mouse and gave me problems with other programs. I imagine a 'bad defrag' would be very similar
Has anyone had any problems after a registry defrag?
Also it seems rather risky to be tinkering with the registry, being an important part of windows and all. I know I've had some problems with varies registry cleaners that killed off keyboard/mouse and gave me problems with other programs. I imagine a 'bad defrag' would be very similar
Has anyone had any problems after a registry defrag?
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
The only thing registry cleaning/defragging may speed up is your computers boot time since the computer checks the registry at start up.
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
Really? 
I always thought it checked when you start a program too. Figured that's what all the program entries were for!
You learn something new everyday!
I always thought it checked when you start a program too. Figured that's what all the program entries were for!
You learn something new everyday!
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
A program reads whatever registry entries it needs to read. When starting up Windows checks the registries integrity as well as to see what needs starting and what settings a lot of the windows components need. Not to mention file association.
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
I've always been confused by the idea of defragging a system component while the system is on. It seems like that would be a lot of extra disk activity. If you're concerned about squeezing out a little more performance, I would do a whole-disk defrag from a boot disk from time to time to minimize the number of disk writes. Additionally, you can clearly tell if and when defrags are actually improving system speed/responsiveness.ChemZ wrote:I know defragging your HD does speed things up, but what about the registry?
For my part, I just reinstall Windows every 6-9 months. I've done this pretty much as long as I've owned a Windows machine. The Windows registry gets gradually more problematic and buggy over the course of a computer's life, so I find this is the best way to maintain performance and avoid issues.
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
Solid rule!For my part, I just reinstall Windows every 6-9 months.
Re: Do you defrag your registry?
[Moderator note: After user Ruby posted the following message, a related but separate topic of discussion was spawned, it was moved to a new thread. This thread is not closed, just broken into two parts for simplicity.]
Ruby wrote:Wouldn't it be easier to take a snapshot (PartClone, Partimage) after a clean install.webfork wrote:For my part, I just reinstall Windows every 6-9 months.
I can restore an image of a fresh clean system in ~3 min.