Re: \WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file size problem - prevention?

Thanks for your speedy comments.

I appreciate that there are a number of dcumented ways of resolving the
problem once it occurs, but all require an administrator to go to the machine
(physically or virtually). Restoring a backup of the registry is certainly a
fix once a machine is broken, but we are trying to avoid all of this by
preventing the problem in the first place.

We have certainly looked at refreshing images in the past or using Deep
Freeze type technologies, but up until now have found this unecessary. Our
research indicates that the size is the root cause of the issues we are
seeing. If there is no way of preventing the continual growth of the
config\system file we may need to revist this idea.

Good system management points to prevention rather than cure, and I just
have difficulty accepting that a essential file like this can just keeping
growing in size and cannot be managed. The eternal optomist, I keep telling
myself "There must be a way..."

Sarah

"Pegasus (MVP)" wrote:


"Sarah G" <Sarah G@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:B5ECF735-E5AF-4C7B-956D-6935BC47BC59@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Is there a way of pro-actively reducing the size of the
\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file before it reaches a size which will
cause
the "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or
corrupt" error?

There seems to be a lot of information out there about how to recover once
the problem has occurred, but nothing to suggest how to stop it from
happening in the first place.

In our scenario we run a fleet of several hundred Windows 2000 Pro
workstations which are accessed every day by students. These days each
student comes armed with a USB storage device which they plug in to the
workstation they happen to be using that day.

We are finding that each time a user plugs in a new USB device, Windows
2000
adds an entry to the HKLM\ Systems\CurrentControlSet\enum\USB and
HKLM\Systems\CurrentControlSet\enum\USBStore hives in the registry. With
a
high turnover of students using the computers we are seeing a lot of
different devices being registered in this way.

In turn this causes the \systemroot\config\SYSTEM file to grow. As the
maximum size of this file appears to be 13 MB, we are starting to see
machines failing to boot with the error "Windows could not start because
the
following file is missing or corrupt:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM ".
Recovering from this error is a painful process requiring us to visit the
affected machine and use the Recovery console (or re-image the machine).

Deleting the entries in the registry wuld be easy to automate, but this
does
not appear to impact on the size of the SYSTEM file, and registry cleaners
and registry defrags have had no effect. The only information that seems
to
be around on the Microsoft site, or on the web relates to using the
recovery
console, which is fine for a one off solution, but with a couple of
hundred
PCs which might start to develop the problem we are hoping to find a way
of
preventing it from happening in the first place.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, or even some confirmation that what
we
want to be able to do just isn't possible without using something like
Deep
Freeze.

Thanks, Sarah

Have you considered the possibility that your problems in starting
Win2000 might not at all be related to the ***size*** of the system
registry file but rather to its contents? I think this is far more probable.

In your situation I would do this:
- Use regback.exe to create a backup of the registry.
- Let the machine run until it fails.
- Copy the saved registry files back over the flawed originals.

If your system disk uses the FAT32 file system then you can
perform the last step by booting the machine with a Win98
boot disk. If it uses NTFS then you can do it equally easily
with a Bart PE boot CD.

Some people use imaging techniques when operating in a
highly volatile environment: They simply restore each machine
to the standard image at the end of each day.



.

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