How big should a typical registry be? :)

[George]

I suspect this is an unanswerable question, but ...

In regedit, with 'my computer' selected, when I export 'registration
files', I get a .reg file of about 80 Mb. I don't know, but that seems
kind of large. I have some (presumably) similar files from serveral
years ago that are more like 8 Mb.

Any info would be appreciated. Even just "My .reg is xxx Mb."

Thanks,
George

 

[Jim]

I suspect this is an unanswerable question, but ...

In regedit, with 'my computer' selected, when I export 'registration
files', I get a .reg file of about 80 Mb. I don't know, but that seems
kind of large. I have some (presumably) similar files from serveral
years ago that are more like 8 Mb.

Any info would be appreciated. Even just "My .reg is xxx Mb."

Thanks,
George

Sorry, you cannot judge the size of the registry by the size of a reg file.
Reg files are just text files which regedit uses to make changes to the
registry.
The registry is kept in a 4 hives in the \windows\system32\config folder,
and each user has an account specific hive in ntuser.dat. Those hives are
binary files which are much more compact that the .reg files.
Jim

 

[Don Phillipson]

In regedit, with 'my computer' selected, when I export 'registration
files', I get a .reg file of about 80 Mb. I don't know, but that seems
kind of large. I have some (presumably) similar files from serveral
years ago that are more like 8 Mb.

That seems about right. I was used to Win98 REG files of
2 to 8 Mb thus surprised by the size of my first WinXP REG
file -- in the range 50 to 100 Mb. WinXP offers other ways to
skin this particular cat, e.g. prefers System Restore to load
an earlier known good Registry. Saving Sys Rst. info takes
no more effort than exporting a Registry.