Ping: John John MVP re: Ccleaner

[Ken Springer]

Its obvious you don't understand how accessing the Registry works.

Think of it as going straight into a store, to the shelf and product and leaving
immediately.

It is not a case where you have to walk up and down every aisle looking for the shelf that
holds the product of desire and as the store increases shelf space you have to walk up and
down more aisles.

Let me restate, I think we are confusing each other.

The point I was trying to make, using your grocery aisle analogy (very
good, BTW), is how *long* is that aisle, and how fast can you travel it
while booting up and loading into RAM.

And once in RAM, how long does it take you to get to that specific spot
on the shelf and retrieve that info. This, I believe, is where Ken
Blake was saying the amount of time is in microseconds, even if there
are huge numbers of unneeded entries. Bill in Co and I were discussing,
I think ( ) the time it takes to get those entries into RAM at bootup.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[David H. Lipman]

Let me restate, I think we are confusing each other.

The point I was trying to make, using your grocery aisle analogy (very good, BTW), is
how *long* is that aisle, and how fast can you travel it while booting up and loading
into RAM.

And once in RAM, how long does it take you to get to that specific spot on the shelf and
retrieve that info. This, I believe, is where Ken Blake was saying the amount of time
is in microseconds, even if there are huge numbers of unneeded entries. Bill in Co and
I were discussing, I think ( ) the time it takes to get those entries into RAM at
bootup.

It's not many pennies on the dollar and its not the size of the Registry. Think about the
time differential of the two comparisons. The length of the walk to go direct to the
product vs. going up and down aisles. Any change in the time that one may consider a
delay is is a mere fraction.

When the system is booting you have a lot more going on that reading a binary tree. You
are loading stubs (your old TSRs) and NT Services. You are loading the server of services
and they have dependencies. All are executables that require the loading of DLLs. All
are disk files that reside on the disk which is secondatry storage and not primary storage
and since the OS hasn't cached data, the longest time is evident. How those files are
accessed will have a greater impact on the time the OS takes to effectuate a boot than the
loading the Registry into RAM and then reading brancches and leaf nodes of a binary tree.

I love analogies so here is another...

I always equate disk defragmentation to reading a newspaper. When one reads an article on
page 1 you'll find that you'll read a few paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 23.
You'll read a few more paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 12. You'll read a few
more paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 30. Wouldn't it be nice if it was one
contiguous article on page 1 ?

In the analogy every time the reader has to thumb from page to page and find the article
there is introduced latency. That latency can be considerable and if the article is
broken up into many sub parts that considerable latency builds up. By making the article
contiguous one can read through that article much faster. The same goes when data is
fragmented on the hard disk. Thus one will get more of an improvement in loading the OS
by making sure the OS is not being affected by fragmented secondary storage.

My final stateemnt on the boot time is WHAT is being loaded and in what order. More often
then not, the "used" computer will load numerous items from various locations from NT
Services to HKLM/HKCU Run location, programs\startup, etc. One has to manage these items.
Everything from the Machine Debug Manager service to video TSRs to QuickTime's stub, etc.

Optimize the hard disk, optimize what is loaded upon boot and one will see much greater
gains than try to 'F' with the Registry.

 

[James D Andrews]

Ken Springer snuck on to your hard drive to scribble:

I *always* reformat if I have that opening. Why? Basically because I never
know where, what, when, etc. the computer's been through. I think I
mentioned a Tech-net article about compromised computers earlier, something
I'd always believed even before reading that article.

Like all those reports about the used copiers with sensitive
information still on them?

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road,
and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be
swept off to.
-Samwise Gamgee quoting Bilbo Baggins, edited

 

[James D Andrews]

Ken Springer banged his head on his keyboard to write :

One hardware item I didn't think of when I mentioned the speed of this and
that, was the speed data is accessed from the hard drive. Even though the
data that gets loaded isn't actually used by anything at any time later, it's
logical the simple loading of that data has to slow things down somewhere.

As Ken Blake said, those one or two lines in a registry file won't make any
noticeable difference. But what if it's one or two *thousand* lines?

I'd think the loading of unneeded .dll's would also slow things down.

I just picked the "one or two thousand" line to illustrate the point.

I just uninstalled Google Earth, which I probably only used once or
twice anyways, because Google installed Chrome on my system without my
permission - or knowledge - until after the fact. Forum searches
revealed it was likely caused by the Updater in Google Earth. Nobody,
not even Google, gets to do that, as far as I'm concerned, so all
Google software is out of there.

Uninstalling Google Earth by Revo, I was stunned to find it had over
5000 files left behind in the registry after running the program's
uninstaller and over 1000 leftover crap files.

I can't say whether removal of all this sped up my startup in anyway
since I turn my comp on and go get coffee while it loads (unless
there's a problem I'm looking for), but I sure feel better about
relieving my system of all that garbage.

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

 

[Ken Springer]

It's not many pennies on the dollar and its not the size of the Registry. Think about the
time differential of the two comparisons. The length of the walk to go direct to the
product vs. going up and down aisles. Any change in the time that one may consider a
delay is is a mere fraction.

But it depends on how you get to that product. Travel up the aisle in
an F-16 Tomcat (some quad core high speed CPU), yea, no time at all.
Now, do it in a wheelchair (single core, old slow, by today's standards,
and it does feel slow.

I like James D Andrews post, about Google Earth leaving behind 5,000
left behind. If there were just 6,000 entries to begin with, it really
doesn't matter whether the user sees the effects or not, it still has to
take more time to get to that point. No matter what, the system has to
know *where* in the aisle the product is.

When the system is booting you have a lot more going on that reading a binary tree. You
are loading stubs (your old TSRs) and NT Services. You are loading the server of services
and they have dependencies. All are executables that require the loading of DLLs. All
are disk files that reside on the disk which is secondatry storage and not primary storage
and since the OS hasn't cached data, the longest time is evident. How those files are
accessed will have a greater impact on the time the OS takes to effectuate a boot than the
loading the Registry into RAM and then reading brancches and leaf nodes of a binary tree.

I don't disagree at all, but the more crap you have to deal with, in
total, the longer it will take. Each little piece adds to that time.
At the moment, the larger discussion here is just one little piece of
crap, excess registry entries. Of and by itself, it doesn't make much
difference, except in James's case.

But I strive to remove *all* the little pieces of unneeded crap,
anything the user of the computer doesn't require to make the computer
function to the max. When you consider the additive effect of all those
little pieces, plus a slow computer, it has to boot faster.

I love analogies so here is another...

An analogy is a wonderful teaching tool. I always try to use an analogy
the listener understands to explain the general operation of some
specific computer feature. Once the listener has that figured out, they
tend to go gangbusters for awhile.

I always equate disk defragmentation to reading a newspaper. When one reads an article on
page 1 you'll find that you'll read a few paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 23.
You'll read a few more paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 12. You'll read a few
more paragraphs and it tells you to go to page 30. Wouldn't it be nice if it was one
contiguous article on page 1 ?

In the analogy every time the reader has to thumb from page to page and find the article
there is introduced latency. That latency can be considerable and if the article is
broken up into many sub parts that considerable latency builds up. By making the article
contiguous one can read through that article much faster. The same goes when data is
fragmented on the hard disk. Thus one will get more of an improvement in loading the OS
by making sure the OS is not being affected by fragmented secondary storage.

I see the same type of issue with modern online help systems. You can
spend so frickin' much time trying to make sense out of a system, you
never find what you are looking for. And if you don't use a search term
that is used by the help system, or in the help documentation, you won't
find a thing.

My final stateemnt on the boot time is WHAT is being loaded and in what order. More often
then not, the "used" computer will load numerous items from various locations from NT
Services to HKLM/HKCU Run location, programs\startup, etc. One has to manage these items.
Everything from the Machine Debug Manager service to video TSRs to QuickTime's stub, etc.

Optimize the hard disk, optimize what is loaded upon boot and one will see much greater
gains than try to 'F' with the Registry.

Which is why optimizing the hard disk is the last, or almost the last,
thing I do before giving the computer back to the owner.

In all honesty, I don't think we are on different pages, I just work on
Model T's most of the time, and you do notice the effect of the "little"
things.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[Mint]

There are no good registry cleaners and they provide no benefits.


That's true of many programs. But those leftover entries do not hurt
you.


Absolutely false.


If you say so, I believe you. But neither I nor anyone else who warns
against the use of registry cleaners has ever said that they always
cause problems. If they always caused problems, they would disappear
from the market almost immediately. Many people have used a registry
cleaner and never had a problem with it.

Rather, the problem with a registry cleaner is that it carries with it
the substantial *risk* of having a problem. And since there is no
benefit to using a registry cleaner, running that risk is a very bad
bargain.

Ken,

You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

Andy

 

[Mint]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it correct that the registry
has to be loaded into memory? If so, on low memory systems a large
registry might increase the odds of the OS using the swap file when
other programs require more than the available RAM capacity, I'm
guessing that's where this thinking came from.

You are right.

I am a programmer and I also tune up computers as part of my computer
repair business.

I found a computer thrown away because the owner wasn't happy with
it's speed.

After removing unnecessary startup programs and cleaning the registry,
the computer ran about 500% faster.

I am using it now.

Take care,
Andy

 

[David H. Lipman]

You are right.

I am a programmer and I also tune up computers as part of my computer
repair business.

I found a computer thrown away because the owner wasn't happy with
it's speed.

After removing unnecessary startup programs and cleaning the registry,
the computer ran about 500% faster.

I am using it now.

Take care,
Andy

Right "After removing unnecessary startup programs" which made it faster.

 

[James D Andrews]

Mint embroidered on the monitor :

You are right.

I am a programmer and I also tune up computers as part of my computer
repair business.

I found a computer thrown away because the owner wasn't happy with
it's speed.

After removing unnecessary startup programs and cleaning the registry,
the computer ran about 500% faster.

I am using it now.

Take care,
Andy

Our society's disposable mentality at it again.
It brings to mind a line from a David Letterman joke back the '80s:
"Look. Free dummy."

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because
you might not get there."
- Yogi Berra

 

[Mayayana]

Rather, the problem with a registry cleaner is that it carries with it

the substantial *risk* of having a problem. And since there is no
benefit to using a registry cleaner, running that risk is a very bad
bargain.

| You are certainly entitled to your opinion.

You think it's unfounded opinion? Download Regmon
or the newer ProcMon and then change a setting in
IE. You'll see IE check several *thousand* Registry
settings, over and over again, for no apparent reason.
Not only is Microsoft flagrantly wasteful in that regard,
it all happens in the blink of an eye. (The only possible
reason for it that I can think of is the Microsoftie
obsession with secret settings. In other words, they seem
to be trying to obfuscate their activities in the Registry
by burying each relevant operation with 1000 or more
nonsense calls.)

Mistaken Registry entries in use are a problem. Those
need to be corrected. Old program settings for a removed
program are just an excuse to sell junkware to non-tech.
people.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion
is services. XP typically has dozens of services running that
are pointless and/or risky. (I read recently that MS is
planning a new approach in Win8. They want to shoehorn
the bloated Windows 7 mess onto tablets, and one idea
they came up with was to have services shut down when
not in use.... Dawn breaks on Marblehead.

 

[James D Andrews]

Mayayana was thinking very hard and all he could come up with was:

You think it's unfounded opinion? Download Regmon
or the newer ProcMon and then change a setting in
IE. You'll see IE check several *thousand* Registry
settings, over and over again, for no apparent reason.
Not only is Microsoft flagrantly wasteful in that regard,
it all happens in the blink of an eye. (The only possible
reason for it that I can think of is the Microsoftie
obsession with secret settings. In other words, they seem
to be trying to obfuscate their activities in the Registry
by burying each relevant operation with 1000 or more
nonsense calls.)

Mistaken Registry entries in use are a problem. Those
need to be corrected. Old program settings for a removed
program are just an excuse to sell junkware to non-tech.
people.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion
is services. XP typically has dozens of services running that
are pointless and/or risky. (I read recently that MS is
planning a new approach in Win8. They want to shoehorn
the bloated Windows 7 mess onto tablets, and one idea
they came up with was to have services shut down when
not in use.... Dawn breaks on Marblehead.

Assuming you want to use tablets.
Personally, I don't want my office computer to look and operate like a
cell phone, and I don't want to have to hold my computer constantly, or
pick it up/put it down constantly. But then again, I don't like cell
phones, either.

--
-There are some who call me...
Jim


"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's
troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov

 

[David H. Lipman]

You think it's unfounded opinion? Download Regmon
or the newer ProcMon and then change a setting in
IE. You'll see IE check several *thousand* Registry
settings, over and over again, for no apparent reason.
Not only is Microsoft flagrantly wasteful in that regard,
it all happens in the blink of an eye. (The only possible
reason for it that I can think of is the Microsoftie
obsession with secret settings. In other words, they seem
to be trying to obfuscate their activities in the Registry
by burying each relevant operation with 1000 or more
nonsense calls.)

Mistaken Registry entries in use are a problem. Those
need to be corrected. Old program settings for a removed
program are just an excuse to sell junkware to non-tech.
people.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion
is services. XP typically has dozens of services running that
are pointless and/or risky. (I read recently that MS is
planning a new approach in Win8. They want to shoehorn
the bloated Windows 7 mess onto tablets, and one idea
they came up with was to have services shut down when
not in use.... Dawn breaks on Marblehead.

I did...

"When the system is booting you have a lot more going on that reading a binary tree. You
are loading stubs (your old TSRs) and NT Services. You are loading the server of services
and they have dependencies. All are executables that require the loading of DLLs."

and...

"One has to manage these items. Everything from the Machine Debug Manager service to
video TSRs to QuickTime's stub, etc."

I did not go into depth on NT Services but I did elude to their overhead.

 

[Mayayana]

| > One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this discussion
| > is services.
|
| I did...
|

Woops. Didn't notice that. That's one of the big things I
always deal with on a slow PC.

Another problem that I'm not sure was mentioned: The IE
cache. I don't know why it's a problem. I guess that it's
probably because IE is tied to Explorer. So Explorer may track
the cache when it's being used. In any case, I've seen trouble
there a number of times. Windows will run in extreme slow
motion, getting noticeably faster after the cache is cleared.
The IE cache defaults to something like 1 GB and people never
clear it. I always clear it, then set the limit to as small as it
will go -- I think that's 8 MB.