SYSTEM subkey grows too big - Win2000 won't start!

[Dominik Jain]

Hi!

My Win2000 installation has been running since 2000, and my system has
undergone quite a number of hardware changes. Thus, my SYSTEM subkey has
grown considerably over the years.

I have just installed a new motherboard (new drivers!) and the only way I
could get it running was by overwriting system32/config/SYSTEM with a backup
from 1.5 years ago, which was smaller, because the one I had would grow too
large and Win2k would report that SYSTEM is missing or corrupt at start up.
Having experimented with several backups of SYSTEM, I found that Win2k does
not start (reporting "missing/corrupted") whenever the file reaches a size
of
approximately 10.6 Million bytes or above on my system.

Q269075 mentions that only 16MB of memory are available for Win2k to load
the kernel, HAL, boot drivers and SYSTEM hive. That would explain it.

Are there any ways to significantly reduce the size of the SYSTEM subkey?
Any unnecessary data that is safe to delete (other than the shares mentioned
in Q269075)?
I have, for example, noticed that CurrentControlSet/Control/Session
Manager/AppCompatibility contains a number of entries regarding executable
files that are totally irrelevant to the boot process...

Please help, for I am again approaching the critical boundary - and haven't
installed all the new hardware yet.

bye,

 

[Dave Patrick]

You might try removing any unattached devices from Device Manager. To
display hidden devices, non-Plug and Play devices, and devices not attached
to the computer (commonly known as "ghosted" or "phantom" devices) Save the
following two lines as a file then execute.

--------------------------setdev.bat---------------------
set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
start devmgmt.msc
---------------------------------------------------------

Then, View|Show Hidden Devices to remove these devices. If any ghost
network, graphics, etc. adapters are shown then uninstall these.


--
Regards,

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

:
| Hi!
|
| My Win2000 installation has been running since 2000, and my system has
| undergone quite a number of hardware changes. Thus, my SYSTEM subkey has
| grown considerably over the years.
|
| I have just installed a new motherboard (new drivers!) and the only way I
| could get it running was by overwriting system32/config/SYSTEM with a
backup
| from 1.5 years ago, which was smaller, because the one I had would grow
too
| large and Win2k would report that SYSTEM is missing or corrupt at start
up.
| Having experimented with several backups of SYSTEM, I found that Win2k
does
| not start (reporting "missing/corrupted") whenever the file reaches a size
| of
| approximately 10.6 Million bytes or above on my system.
|
| Q269075 mentions that only 16MB of memory are available for Win2k to load
| the kernel, HAL, boot drivers and SYSTEM hive. That would explain it.
|
| Are there any ways to significantly reduce the size of the SYSTEM subkey?
| Any unnecessary data that is safe to delete (other than the shares
mentioned
| in Q269075)?
| I have, for example, noticed that CurrentControlSet/Control/Session
| Manager/AppCompatibility contains a number of entries regarding executable
| files that are totally irrelevant to the boot process...
|
| Please help, for I am again approaching the critical boundary - and
haven't
| installed all the new hardware yet.
|
| bye,
|
| --
| Dominik Jain
| http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain
|

 

[Dominik Jain]

You might try removing any unattached devices from Device Manager. To
display hidden devices, non-Plug and Play devices, and devices not
attached to the computer (commonly known as "ghosted" or "phantom"
devices)...

Thank you very much for this piece of advice! I was able to delete numerous
devices that were no longer part of my computer. At first, the size of the
file "SYSTEM" did not change, but after I defragmented the registry, it
shrunk by a full 2MB.

cheers!

 

[Dave Patrick]

Glad to hear it helped.

--
Regards,

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

:
| Thank you very much for this piece of advice! I was able to delete
numerous
| devices that were no longer part of my computer. At first, the size of the
| file "SYSTEM" did not change, but after I defragmented the registry, it
| shrunk by a full 2MB.
|
| cheers!
|
| --
| Dominik Jain
| http://home.cs.tum.edu/~jain
|