Maintaining a healthy system?

[Art]

I'm somewhat new to Win 2K Pro, and I seek expert advice on routine
maintenance. I'm used to maintaining Win 98 and ME. One of my major
utils for this purpose was always Norton's System Check (and NDD). But
the old version of NU will not intall on Win 2K, and I'm in no hurry
to purchase a updated version.

One one new machine, after doing all the Windows Updates, including
IE6 sp1, sp4 for Win 2k, all the critical security patches, and Media
Player 9 .... the freeware util RegSeeker found over 300 registry
items. I went ahead and let it delete them all, and the os survived
I've downloaded every freeware registry cleaner I can find. But I
don't know what else might be useful and helpful. Not sure what can
be invoked within the os itself as a maintenance aid, other than
Defrag and Disk Cleaner. What does Win 2K do to self-check its
DLLs and other files, etc.?

I use FAT 32 rather than NTFS. I'm used to using XXCOPY and a separate
physical drive on a removeable tray as a backup. I'm wondering if it's
worthwhile to backup portions of the os. I can use Odi's LCOPY off a
Win 9X boot disk to restore, if necessary. In fact, I can use it to
backup in the first place since sixteen Windows files do not copy
while in Windows using XXCOPY. I just don't know if such measures
are of value with Win 2K. After all, I never had to restore Win 9X for
any reason other than my own wrecking of the os once And Win 2K
should be far more reliable, from what I hear, providing I don't wreck
it with my tinkering around.

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I'm somewhat new to Win 2K Pro, and I seek expert advice on routine
maintenance. I'm used to maintaining Win 98 and ME. One of my major
utils for this purpose was always Norton's System Check (and NDD). But
the old version of NU will not intall on Win 2K, and I'm in no hurry
to purchase a updated version.

Once a useful utility suite, back in the days of MS-DOS, when Peter
Norton was more than a picture on the box, Norton Utilities have been
becoming increasingly useless and redundant over the years. There's
little offered by NU that Win2K cannot already do natively. And some of
Systemworks's features, like CrashGuard and CleanSweep (if they're still
included) cause far more problems then they prevent.

One one new machine, after doing all the Windows Updates, including
IE6 sp1, sp4 for Win 2k, all the critical security patches, and Media
Player 9 .... the freeware util RegSeeker found over 300 registry
items. I went ahead and let it delete them all, and the os survived
I've downloaded every freeware registry cleaner I can find. But I
don't know what else might be useful and helpful.

The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences. One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change. Having seen the results of inexperienced people
using automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user.

The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe. If you lack the knowledge and experience to maintain
your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry cleaner,
no matter how safe they claim to be.

Further, no one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that the
use of an automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good. There's certainly been
no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such
products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
or stability.

What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt will be fixed by using an automated registry
cleaner? If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it
would be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only
the specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. Why
use a shotgun when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally, the
manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely to
have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make
multiple changes simultaneously.

I always use Regedit.exe. I trust my own experience and judgment
far more than I would any automated registry cleaner. I strongly
encourage others to acquire the knowledge, as well.

Not sure what can
be invoked within the os itself as a maintenance aid, other than
Defrag and Disk Cleaner. What does Win 2K do to self-check its
DLLs and other files, etc.?

If you want to ensure that you've the correct versions of systems
files, use Win2K's built-in System File Checker (Start > Run > SFC
/SCANNOW). Have the installation CD (with SP4 slip-streamed) handy.
Along with CHKDSK (to be used only when a problem is suspected), Defrag,
and Disk Clean-up, nothing else is necessary.

I use FAT 32 rather than NTFS.

Why? Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is
an option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, a lot of wasted hard drive space on
volumes larger than 8 Gb in size, and it can't support volumes larger
than 32Gb, as implemented in Win2K. But your computing needs may vary,
and there is no hard and fast answer.

To answer your questions without getting too technical is
difficult, but has been handled quite well by the late Alex Nichol in
the article here:

FAT & NTFS File Systems in Windows XP
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfs.htm

Somewhat more technical information is here:

Choosing Between File Systems
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/filesyst.asp

NTFS file system
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

I'm used to using XXCOPY and a separate
physical drive on a removeable tray as a backup. I'm wondering if it's
worthwhile to backup portions of the os. I can use Odi's LCOPY off a
Win 9X boot disk to restore, if necessary. In fact, I can use it to
backup in the first place since sixteen Windows files do not copy
while in Windows using XXCOPY.

Why not use Win2K's built-in NTBackup?

I just don't know if such measures
are of value with Win 2K.

Backing up data files is always a wise precaution, but I've never seen
much value in backing up the OS, unless speed of recovery is important;
in which case, partition imaging makes much more sense.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[George Hester]

You already did "tinker around." Chuck the regcleaners don't use them
because they remove things which are necessary. Just watch your browing
don't visit free web hosting sites. Don't install too many applications.
Make sure when you find a driver which works keep it do not upgrade it. You
really should be at NTFS for you have no security.

 

[Art]

Once a useful utility suite, back in the days of MS-DOS, when Peter
Norton was more than a picture on the box, Norton Utilities have been
becoming increasingly useless and redundant over the years. There's
little offered by NU that Win2K cannot already do natively. And some of
Systemworks's features, like CrashGuard and CleanSweep (if they're still
included) cause far more problems then they prevent.

Agreed. I never used that crap. But the items I mentioned were quite
useful on Win 9X/ME. Also, Speed Disk (defrag) was excellent. And NDD
sometimes found problems Scan disk did not.

The registry contains all of the operating system's "knowledge" of
the computer's hardware devices, installed software, the location of the
device drivers, and the computer's configuration. A misstep in the
registry can have severe consequences. One should not even turning
loose a poorly understood automated "cleaner," unless he is fully
confident that he knows *exactly* what is going to happen as a result of
each and every change. Having seen the results of inexperienced people
using automated registry "cleaners," I can only advise all but the most
experienced computer technicians (and/or hobbyists) to avoid them all.
Experience has shown me that such tools simply are not safe in the hands
of the inexperienced user.

The only thing needed to safely clean your registry is knowledge
and Regedit.exe. If you lack the knowledge and experience to maintain
your registry by yourself, then you also lack the knowledge and
experience to safely configure and use any automated registry cleaner,
no matter how safe they claim to be.

Further, no one has ever demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that the
use of an automated registry cleaner, particularly by an untrained,
inexperienced computer user, does any real good. There's certainly been
no empirical evidence offered to demonstrate that the use of such
products to "clean" WinXP's registry improves a computer's performance
or stability.

What specific problem are you experiencing that you *know* beyond
all reasonable doubt will be fixed by using an automated registry
cleaner? If you do have a problem that is rooted in the registry, it
would be far better to simply edit (after backing up, of course) only
the specific key(s) and/or value(s) that are causing the problem. Why
use a shotgun when a scalpel will do the job? Additionally, the
manually changing of one or two registry entries is far less likely to
have the dire consequences of allowing an automated product to make
multiple changes simultaneously.

I always use Regedit.exe. I trust my own experience and judgment
far more than I would any automated registry cleaner. I strongly
encourage others to acquire the knowledge, as well.

I find the registry checkers to be useful. I see no point in leaving
potentially harmful stuff in the registry. The issue is intelligent
and informed use of these tools, IMO. To recommend excluding them from
use isn't the best advice, since the tools can lead you to items that
should be fixed that you wouldn't be aware of until a problem
surfaced. I'm interested in _preventative_ maintenance, and not just
waiting until something goes wrong.

If you want to ensure that you've the correct versions of systems
files, use Win2K's built-in System File Checker (Start > Run > SFC
/SCANNOW). Have the installation CD (with SP4 slip-streamed) handy.
Along with CHKDSK (to be used only when a problem is suspected), Defrag,
and Disk Clean-up, nothing else is necessary.

Ah! I had tried this, just typing sfc, and nothing happened. When
searching Help, nothing came up under sfc. So I concluded it wasn't
available in Win 2K Pro. However, searching Help Index for System File
Check got the hit. And, of course, doing a Find for sfc.exe showed in
the system32 folder.

Thanks. It works fine And I'm relieved that the os has this.

Why? Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is
an option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, a lot of wasted hard drive space on
volumes larger than 8 Gb in size, and it can't support volumes larger
than 32Gb, as implemented in Win2K. But your computing needs may vary,
and there is no hard and fast answer.

For one thing, I typically use only about 4 gig. My 50 gig drives
formatted fine in DOS 7 amd 8. And Win 2K sees them as they are.
I prefer FAT 32 since I write DOS programs and utils which only work
on FAT 12, 16 and 32. I couldn't care less about the kind of so-called
security NTFS offers. I've always been quite secure on Win 98/ME,
since I know what I'm doing in that arena.

BTW, I don't use file/printer sharing. Anyone interested in hardening
their os, take a look at the procedure I've written:

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg/Win2KPro.html

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[Gary H]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 09:08:32 -0600, Bruce Chambers

[snip]

Why? Personally, I wouldn't even consider using FAT32 when NTFS is
an option. FAT32 has no security capabilities, no compression
capabilities, no fault tolerance, a lot of wasted hard drive space on
volumes larger than 8 Gb in size, and it can't support volumes larger
than 32Gb, as implemented in Win2K.

YES IT CAN. It's that w2k (and some other programs) refuse to (high
level) FORMAT one larget than that. A drive formatted elsewhere works
fine.

BTW, FAT32 has a theoretical limit of 16TB* (still a lot smaller than
NTFS). I have actually had a 250GB drive in a w2k installation for
several months with no problem. I changed it to NTFS after that, to
allow large files (see below).

But your computing needs may vary, and there is no hard and fast answer.

NTFS also allows files larger than 4GB (because of 32-bit file data
pointers), important for some things such as video.

Using FAT32 allows your disk to be accessed by older systems, such as
DOS. DOS access can be very useful for various reasons, including
access to your data files when the w2k system becomes unbootable.

Note That I'm DEFINATELY NOT saying the FAT32 is always better, just
giving you something else to consider.

[snip]

Backing up data files is always a wise precaution, but I've never seen
much value in backing up the OS, unless speed of recovery is important;
in which case, partition imaging makes much more sense.

And speed of recovery often IS important. You never know when you'll
need to do it, it is likely to happen at a time when you need to be
using your computer NOW.

BTW, it doesn't hurt to have an extra hard drive around for such
emergencies, although most of the times I've needed to restore have
been software rather than hardware failures.

You may want to backup just data more often, and if you do both make
sure the data is accessible independantly of the system.

&&

* 8TB on Win 9x. The OS actually limits this to 2TB. The theoretical
limit is

2 ^ bitsinFAT * maxclustersize

For w2k,, that's

2 ^ 28 * 64K = 16TB

The OS limit is because Windows uses 32-bit sector pointers. 2 ^ 32 *
512 = 2TB.

--
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact
for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose
objections are based not on reasoning but on
doctrinaire adherence to religious principles"
-- James D. Watson

 

[George Hester]

Art you use those reg cleaners it is about 98% certain something will go
wrong. Bruce was right in what he said about them. You know there is a
reason these type of applications come and go like frogs and it is not
because of the weather. It is because they "can" be damaging.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 09:08:32 -0600, Bruce Chambers




I find the registry checkers to be useful. I see no point in leaving
potentially harmful stuff in the registry.

What is "potentially harmful?" Either a given registry entry causes a
problem, or it doesn't. It certainly isn't going to morph into a
problem over time.

The issue is intelligent
and informed use of these tools, IMO.

That's true of any tool.

To recommend excluding them from
use isn't the best advice, since the tools can lead you to items that
should be fixed that you wouldn't be aware of until a problem
surfaced.

If no problem has surfaced, there's obviously nothing to fix.

I'm interested in _preventative_ maintenance, and not just
waiting until something goes wrong.

Then you should definitely avoid automated registry cleaners. Unless,
of course, you want to create problems.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Sam]

What is "potentially harmful?" Either a given registry entry causes a
problem, or it doesn't. It certainly isn't going to morph into a
problem over time.

Essentially, they do. An entry that's relativly harmless now could
lead to severe damage when combined with a later entry.

[snip]

 

[Art]

What is "potentially harmful?" Either a given registry entry causes a
problem, or it doesn't. It certainly isn't going to morph into a
problem over time.

Invalid links to files often don't show up right away.

If no problem has surfaced, there's obviously nothing to fix.

Not true. The fit can hit the chan after the next boot.

Then you should definitely avoid automated registry cleaners. Unless,
of course, you want to create problems.

Automated? I've never seen or used one that I didn't have complete
control over. I get a list of items ... a menu ... from which I can
select items to delete or not. Registry backup is always involved.

Anyway, I agree it's a potentially dangerous sort of thing. That's why
I joked about the os surviving my initial deletion of over 300
registry items that RegSeeker had found.

I have to say, though, that I've never experienced problems using
RegSeeker and the Microsoft Regclean ... or for that matter, the old
Norton System check and registry repair. I suppose I shouldn't care
about a bloated registry with a growing number of outdated and
worthless entries. But I do. So I'll no doubt continue with my old bad
habits since they work for me.

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[George Hester]

I never used regseeker but I DID have problems both with regclean (it was
removed for a reason) and Norton's fiasco. There is a reason to be
concerned about a bloated registry. The registry size is NOT unlimited.
It's just that you need to know what the result of removing an entry can be.
Did you know there are registry entries that once removed can NEVER be put
back in under any circumastances? And the machine will function. Doubt me?
Oh well I speak the truth.

 

[Gary H]

Invalid links to files often don't show up right away.


Not true. The fit can hit the chan after the next boot.


Automated? I've never seen or used one that I didn't have complete
control over. I get a list of items ... a menu ... from which I can
select items to delete or not. Registry backup is always involved.

Many people don't know much, and automatically say "yes" to the
program's suggestions. That's not really having control.

Anyway, I agree it's a potentially dangerous sort of thing. That's why
I joked about the os surviving my initial deletion of over 300
registry items that RegSeeker had found.

I have to say, though, that I've never experienced problems using
RegSeeker and the Microsoft Regclean ... or for that matter, the old
Norton System check and registry repair. I suppose I shouldn't care
about a bloated registry with a growing number of outdated and
worthless entries. But I do. So I'll no doubt continue with my old bad
habits since they work for me.

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg

--
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact
for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose
objections are based not on reasoning but on
doctrinaire adherence to religious principles"
-- James D. Watson

 

[Sammy]

You already did "tinker around." Chuck the regcleaners don't use them
because they remove things which are necessary. Just watch your
browing don't visit free web hosting sites.

Once I lost the ability to format CDRW disks (inCD). Didnt use it for
awhile and when I did need it... surprise surprise. I suspect I deleted
something via 'Regcleaner'. Not with the regular cleaning option, which has
never given me problems and sticks to the small stuff (last files winzip
has opened/saved and stuff like that).

Instead I probably used the tab that allows for removal of more important
entries... with the warning about knowing what Im doing. I have used it to
get rid of some that belonged to programs I no longer had. And that does
happen, despite uninstallers that say they remove everything. I probably
thought it belonged to something I didnt have.

Really its not too different that getting into the registry directly for
some specific things. Except that its too easy for Joe Schmoe to tinker
around with, as you said. Its not something that should be treated like
Adaware either. I have also looked at other cleaners that say they have
deeper scans, which I take to mean they go after things they shouldnt. One
wanted to get rid of something somewhat related to directx...in fact some
companys program named 'Regcleaner'. No thanks.

 

[Gary H]

Once I lost the ability to format CDRW disks (inCD).

It's best not to do such things, and uninstall that program. Packet
writing (what you use that 'format' for) is unreliable. Just write
CDRW the same way you would a CD.

[snip]

--
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact
for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose
objections are based not on reasoning but on
doctrinaire adherence to religious principles"
-- James D. Watson

 

[Sammy]

It's best not to do such things, and uninstall that program. Packet
writing (what you use that 'format' for) is unreliable. Just write
CDRW the same way you would a CD.

Quite true... which is why I dont use it much. But recently I needed to
bring some small files with me. Short term storage only ;o)

 

[Gary H]

Quite true... which is why I dont use it much. But recently I needed to
bring some small files with me. Short term storage only ;o)

Unless you need to write to the disk in multiple sessions, while
preserving existing content, there's no need for packet writing here.

For stort term storage, use a -RW disk. For some strange reason,
people seem to fail to believe that these can be written by any CD
burner program and then erased and reused (despite that that's the
definition of CD-RW).

--
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact
for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose
objections are based not on reasoning but on
doctrinaire adherence to religious principles"
-- James D. Watson