Re: The bloated get bloatier

On Wed, 27 May 2009 09:28:50 -0400, "mayayana" <mayaXXyana@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



I used woodgrain in my other music application:
http://www.littletyke.myzen.co.uk/index.html


That's a nice touch. (And nice buttons.)


I don't know why you are so offhand about the registry, especially on
Windows 98. It is well know how the registry in this OS is limited and
bloat and leftovers WILL eventually slow performance down to such an
extent that a reinstall is the only option.

You might be right, but I've never experienced
anything like that. And after watching Regmon run
for a couple of minutes it's hard to imagine how
that could be true. On the one hand, if a progam
leaves behind settings it's probably just a handful
of COM subkeys for installed libs, and/or a few
settings in the Software key. (Most Registry "cleaners"
are nonsense aimed at beginners and PC magazine
columnists looking for a topic to write about. They're
focussed on getting those trivial leftovers in the Software
key.) Yet those values will probably never be accessed
again and they represent a very tiny addition to the
Registry. With that in mind, open Regmon and then
open IE. You should find that IE accesses the Registry
something over 5,000 times in a second or two! Microsoft
is breathtakingly sloppy in the way they use the registry.
Not only are there thousands of potential settings for
IE alone, but running Regmon you can see that when
you run Microsoft software it usually accesses its settings
over and over and over and over. Most of the IE calls are
repeats..... I've never even imagined a possible rational
explanation for that, unless it's just a standard obfuscation
technique. In any case, IE still pops right up despite those
thousands of reads. And most software is far less sloppy
than IE.

So the Registry is clearly extremely efficient. What you're
saying about software and Windows slowing down
noticeably with slightly larger system.dat/user.dat files
would mean that it's quite inefficient, and that you should
be able to reproduce the slowness by just adding a hundred
or so dummy values.

My experience of Windows 98 (SE is somewhat better) is that it ALWAYS
slows down after a few years of use and continual new installations. I
have to admit that I do tend to throw the kitchen sink at the PC and
install anything that takes my fancy in the dev line, just to try it
out. I probably install far more than most "ordinary" users (i.e. not
devs). F'rinstance, as I am currently working on my cut-down version
of an NNTP app, I have currently in my \progs\nntp folder folders for:
Catalyst SocketWrench, DsSocket, Winsock (i.e. mswinsck.ocx, not the
API), Crescent (once provided all its internet tools for free on a
magazine cover disk), Carl Franklin (VB 4.0 Internet Programming), and
Uwe Keller's nntp user control. Having tried out many test apps I am
finally deciding on mswinsck, which is quirky in the extreme, but IS
free and I believe I am close to beating all its little tricks. Sooner
or later all these redundant folders will be deleted, but there'll be
a complete mess of stuff left over in the registry. I know it! I'm
used to it!

However, when I last updated the PC with a new mobo, CPU and hard
drive, the upgrade was so successful that I sent in another duplicate
order to Misco a few days later in order to build a second clone
machine for testing. This one is fitted with a drive rack and I have
numerous removable racks, including a Ubuntu one, to try out, all
imaged with TrueImage (also got it for free on a different cover
disk!). This PC never gets full and always runs as fast as it did the
day I built it, since the software is imaged on various DVDs that I
can reinstate at the drop of a hat. F'rinstance, coming back in the
car from the shops earlier today I thought, hey, I can reinstate the
5gb hard drive image (an ancient WD drive that clitters and clatters,
but still works), install VB6 on it, then check the versions of all
the OCXs. Then install the first service pack and check the versions
again, and so on.

But returning briefly to my main machine at which I am typing right
now, it is now suffering from an occasional freeze during shutdown
(rundll), slow booting (yep, I've tried defrag; makes little
difference, or only for a day or so) and all the other typical
symptoms of an OS that once again needs reinstalling. I've also tried
RegClean and various similar utilities - mostly useless. After doing
it several times now, reinstallation I mean, it's not so bad,
especially if one has a base image from which to work from. And you
end up with a marvellously snappy machine again that always shuts down
nicely and never grumbles.

MM
.

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