JEP - Registry Relief

[Guest]

If I install programs that I do not use that often to run from a CD, does
that put relief on the Registry and possibly make boot up faster? Space is
not an issue, I have the HD space. Thanks greatly!

 

[R. McCarty]

It would be counter productive.Running from the CD is many times
slower than from the hard drive. Besides most programs will install
components and personal settings into both the \Program Files and
\Application data trees on the hard drive regardless of how the app
is actually invoked and run.

Boot time is mostly fixed at around 45-Seconds on XP. It's the
3rd-Party drivers and their background services that extend the time.

The Registry part of it is mostly the "Current User" or profile hive that
loads when you choose a username to login with.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

=?Utf-8?B?amFjaw==?= added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...

If I install programs that I do not use that often to run from
a CD, does that put relief on the Registry and possibly make
boot up faster? Space is not an issue, I have the HD space.
Thanks greatly!

Compared to the amount of MB or even GB that your apps may need
to read from your HD when you first launch them, the time spent
in the Registry is miniscule. I have never noticed a significant
rise in boot-up times in many years except if my HD had gotten
very, very fragmented and/or I'd added many new apps. I do clean
my Registry, VERY carefully, but I do NOT - repeat do NOT -
recommend mucking around with Registry cleaners in an attempt to
decrease start-up times! It is extremely unlikely you'll see any
improvement but far more likely that a mistake will render
some/all of your system useless. The reason I do user-controled
cleans of my Registry periodically using JV16 Powertools is that
I know some of my apps leave orphan keys and entries that I do
want to get rid of. But, even if I left the whole thing alone,
there'd be little improvement in anything at all.

In the case of how I actually run my system, my boot-up times are
quite slow but that is because I have my most commonly used apps
in the Programs>Startup folder. I just boot the PC, select the
user account I want, and relax for a bit or do something else. My
PC is more than stable enough that I only rarely have to restart
anyway.

Now, wrt running apps off a CD, that will relieve a minor amount
of overhead when you boot - maybe - but will vastly increase the
amount of time it takes to launch whatever is on your CDs.

And, just out of curiosity, how slow are you booting and why do
you want to try to increase it? I ask because you want to be safe
and ensure that the benefits to what you do are worth any risks.
Good luck!

 

[Guest]

I understand. I thought maybe it was a proactive way of keeping the pc from
slowing down as I add programs. I have another laptop about a year older
that has slowed down considerably. I know the programs would run slower from
a CD but if they were programs that I didn't use a lot I could live with it
for any benefit of a faster boot up and startup of programs. I guess I
should look to memory addition or deletion of rarely used programs. Thanks
for you assistance

 

[Guest]

Thank you for your extensive information. Actuallyl the laptop boots in fair
time. I think I have noticed more on the initiation of programs slowing as
other programs are added. I know something happens as you add programs
becuase PC's are so much faster when new. So I was looking for the culprits.
I assumed adding programs slowed the PC down somehow? I think maybe I need
to consider more memory, a deletion of rarely used programs. I do use a
cleaner, CC , I think it means Crap Cleaner. It works well and I have never
destroyed anything deleting all it says to remove. Of course I always do a
Restore Point before anything like that. Thanks again very much!

 

[R. McCarty]

Over time a PC's performance degrades because of:
1.) Loading ( Drivers and Services )
2.) Disk fragmentation
Windows is a Platform, the more you load it up ( or maybe
Load it down ) the less responsive it will become. With a
little maintenance you can keep a computer optimized. But
even with that you have to accept some reduction in speed.

 

[HEMI-Powered]

=?Utf-8?B?amFjaw==?= added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...

Thank you for your extensive information. Actuallyl the
laptop boots in fair time. I think I have noticed more on the
initiation of programs slowing as other programs are added. I
know something happens as you add programs becuase PC's are so
much faster when new. So I was looking for the culprits.
I assumed adding programs slowed the PC down somehow? I
think maybe I need
to consider more memory, a deletion of rarely used programs.
I do use a cleaner, CC , I think it means Crap Cleaner. It
works well and I have never destroyed anything deleting all it
says to remove. Of course I always do a Restore Point before
anything like that. Thanks again very much!

I cannot give you a scientific answer here but perhaps what
you're seeing is pretty normal given that your HD and Registry
are at their absolute best for performance immediately after a
clean install, and over time, some degradtion is certainly to be
expected. In looking back over when my XP Pro SP2 box was custom
built for me, that was certainly true.

Again, to help you decide: 1) how stable is your sysytem? if you
only need to reboot once a month or less as I do, kinda so what
if it boots slowly or more slowly than it once did or 2) how slow
is slow? did your PC go from 20 seconds to 20 minutes or from 2
minutes to 4 minutes?

I think more memory will help to a point, but beyond about 2 gig
for XP Pro SP2, I am dubious that you'll see much improvement.
Assuming you're using the same HD now as before, its speed or
lack thereof can't be a cause. As to deleting unused programs,
yes, I would imagine that would give you some improvement IF you
accompanied it with both a really good disk defrag and maybe some
Registry cleaning to get rid of any orphans after the uninstalls.
But, going back to 2) above, how bad is bad? And wrt little used
apps, how little is little? If you need them, you need them, dont
worry about it. But, if "little" really means "never", then go
ahead and uninstall them.

You are wise, BTW, to set a RP before mucking in the Registry. I
personally use JV16 Powertools for cleaning. I set it to
"agressive" mode and CAREFULLY look at what it finds. Almost all
of the orphans come under the category of so-called "useless
entries" or "entry no longer valid". I do NOT delete anything I
am not positively sure of. One other comment: should you have to
do an uninstall/reinstall of some app, it MAY be a good idea to
clean any orphans before the reinstall so that the app thinks it
is clean. e.g., the last time I need to do that with PSP 9
because it was acting up, I think there were over 5,000 orphans
even with the old Jasc Software zappsp utility. So, I manually
deleted them.

Anyway, glad I could be of help, and let me suggest that you err
on the side of being conservative, delete less and worry less if
you can. Again, good luck in seeking the improvements you desire.

 

[Guest]

there are a number
of factors that can cause
poor performance.

as you suspect, the registry
can cause some problems.

i recall a poster having performance
issues. after many posts back and
fourth it was discovered that the o.p.
had 2 antivirus programs running
at the same time.

one method you can use
is to launch windows in
safemode.

if your o.s. runs faster as
well as some of the programs,
then this can be a clue to
issues occurring in normal mode.

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