ControlSet cleanup

[R. Hinse]

This may seem odd, but I would like to clean up the control sets
in my Win2K registry. Everything works fine but the registry size is getting
out of hand and it would help to remove a failed control set and
bring the system key back to a more normal appearance.

As it stands, HKLM/System appears as follows:

Code:
ControlSet001
ControlSet002
ControlSet003
CurrentControlSet


and the contents of the Select Key

Code:
"Current"=dword:00000002
"Default"=dword:00000002
"Failed"=dword:00000001
"LastKnownGood"=dword:00000003


Is it possible to simply delete ControlSet001 (failed) and rename
the other ControlSets to 001 and 002 and reset the Select Key
contents to reflect the proper names solely by editing the registry?

This would seem eminently simple, but I don't want to frig up
anything by doing it.

Any help appreciated.

 

[John John]

How do you mean that the registry size is getting out of hand? How big
is it? I assume you are concerned about the size of the System hive?
How big is the System hive?

Can your remove the failed Control Set? Yes, but *DO* *NOT* change the
other values in the Select key and *DO* *NOT* attempt to rename the
remaining Control Sets! In any case the system should not allow you to
rename the Control Sets, if you try to rename a control set to a new
number it will create a new key for the newly renamed set and leave the
original set unchanged. Any attempt to change these names or change the
values in the Select key may leave you with a computer that fails to
reboot. If you remove the failded control set the Failed value in the
Select key should be 0.

This should provide additional help and information:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302829/ko

The parallel installation is only required if you are trying to repair
an installation that fails to boot.

John

 

[John John]

PS. Forgot to mention, before you attempt any of this you would be
*extremely* well advised to create an updated Emergency Repair Disk,
selecting to back up the registry at the same time! It may be a
lifesaver if things go bad!

John

 

[R. Hinse]

How do you mean that the registry size is getting out of hand? How big
is it? I assume you are concerned about the size of the System hive?
How big is the System hive?

Exporting each of the control set keys produces .reg files of the following
sizes:

ControlSet001 3090KB
ControlSet002 3566KB
ControlSet003 3161KB
CurrentControlSet 3604KB

Maybe I'm looking at this in the wrong way. Since the registry is really a
set of
binary files in \WINNT\system32\config, comparing the various control set
sizes in the above manner may be misleading. The registry files on my
computer
look like the following:

DEFAULT 180KB
SAM 24KB
SECURITY 36KB
SOFTWARE 17428KB
SYSTEM 5388KB

Given the system Hive size of 5388KB, it would appear that it includes only
one control set, but I'm not sure how this works. Maybe you could set me
straight
here.

 

[Dave Patrick]

After you perform the backup you can compare the size of the system hive
found in;

%systemroot%\system32\config
and
%systemroot%\repair\regback

to see if the backup/compaction helped any.


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[John John]

Exporting each of the control set keys produces .reg files of the following
sizes:

ControlSet001 3090KB
ControlSet002 3566KB
ControlSet003 3161KB
CurrentControlSet 3604KB

Maybe I'm looking at this in the wrong way. Since the registry is really a
set of
binary files in \WINNT\system32\config, comparing the various control set
sizes in the above manner may be misleading. The registry files on my
computer
look like the following:

DEFAULT 180KB
SAM 24KB
SECURITY 36KB
SOFTWARE 17428KB
SYSTEM 5388KB

Given the system Hive size of 5388KB, it would appear that it includes only
one control set, but I'm not sure how this works. Maybe you could set me
straight
here.

You can't rely on the size of exported files from the Regedit to compile
or "reverse compile" the size of the system hive. If you export the
keys using Regedt32 instead of Regedit the size of the files for the
same keys will be different. The ControlSet00n's are held in the
System hive, the CurrentControlSet is a pseudo key, it only exists when
the computer is booted, the key is created at boot time from the Control
Set that was used to boot Windows.

John