Bloody Ridiculous!

In article , MC
wrote:

6065 registry entries! Bloody Ridiculous!

Sandman:
I don't understand your point, registry entries are just settings
and take pretty much no space at all. It's a database of settings
for the program, and if it didn't store them in the registry it
would store them in a preferences file on disk which would
probably be bigger.

True, but why so many?

No idea, but the amount shouldn't really matter that much really. My
.plist file for BBEdit, a popular text editor for Mac, is 9,696 lines
long and is 262 KB large. And .plist files are the "standard" format
for preferences in OSX, but they are all kept in separate files
rather than in a DB as with the registry.

There is some fear about the registry that is unneeded. Windows
sometimes have problems with registry corruption where something
happens and the registry gets messed up, but it's only the SYSTEM
part that leads to actual system problems, when you're in user space,
at most you lose your settings, which of course can happen with
preferences files as well.

Also, the idea behind the registry is very forward thinking and is a
very efficient way to deal with system references.

nonsense. the registry is anything but efficient and is a single point
of failure.

OK, so, in days of old when computers were much, much "slower" the
clogging up of the registry may have resulted in the computer having to
do a little more work (as is/was the case with any database) but these
days it matters very little how many redundant entries are in the
registry. Even so, as the op has found, there a million ways of
cleaning out the junk (which is primarily down to the bad uninstall
routines of third party developers) in a simple and, again, efficient
manner.

There is no reason why your computer should be effected because of
registry clog up and, as long you keep a regular backup of your
registry, registry corruption.

in other words, it's a bad idea.

"Sandman" wrote

| There is some fear about the registry that is unneeded.

That's true. One need only run Procmon from
Sysinternals to get a peek. Starting IE results in
some 8,500 Registry reads and file access actions,
in the one second it takes me to switch window
focus and stop the monitoring. Those reads are not
slowing down my system. And in general they're
pointless. IE is not reading 8,500 settings. It's
reading the same stuff, over and over again. Why?
I have no idea. My only guess is that MS want to
obfuscate the specific settings in order to reduce
tweaking.

I'd be far more nervous about running CCleaner,
Revo Uninstaller, or any other handyman tool that's
supposed to "clean up". It's just risky nonsense.
And what is Canon's Zoom Browser doing on the
system in the first place?

Note that Eric doesn't mention what all the Registry
entries are that Revo claims it removed. He doesn't
know what should be there and what shouldn't. Did
the program present a list for his approval? If it did
he apparently didn't understand the list. Yet he allowed
this freebie trinket to edit his Registry.

The vast majority of Windows programs have
decent installers and uninstallers. Microsoft themselves
are one of the worst, foisting all sorts of crap and
then making it unremovable. Device companies like HP
can also impose an awfully lot of unasked-for slop.
But most of the Registry entries left behind by programs
will be under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software.
They'll be handy if the
program is reinstalled later. Anyone who gets a kick out
of housecleaning can always go to that key and remove
whatever they like. There's very little risk in most cases.
But the logic of streamlining just doesn't hold. Those are
settings that won't be active. They're doing no harm. To
think of them as obstructuin is like cleaning dustballs from
under one's bed and then feeling satisfied that the weight
load has been decreased on the floor joists.

On 2017-05-05 11:16, MC wrote:

Also, the idea behind the registry is very forward thinking and is a
very efficient way to deal with system references.

There's a difference between forward thinking and thoughtless.

The phrase "unintended consequences" comes to mind.

drivel snip

There is no reason why your computer should be effected because of
registry clog up and, as long you keep a regular backup of your
registry, registry corruption.

It's a massively stupid POS even by MS standards. I recall getting rid
of Norton took about 4 hours as I had to manually edit hundreds of
registry entries to rid all hooks to Norton AV. The Norton de-install
failed to do it leaving me with a long chore (at Norton's suggestion).

The Registry is possibly lead contender for the worst idea ever in
computer OS design.

Glad my use of Windows has dwindled to two single programs that I use in
virtual containers (WinXP and Win7) on my Macs. And one of those will
be discarded in a year or 2.

--
"If war is God's way of teaching Americans geography, then
recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics."
..Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing.

On 2017-05-04 20:26, Eric Stevens wrote:
I've been using Revo Uninstaller to clean out unwanted programs from
my old computer which now is only used for external backup and my
wife's photographs and email. All was going well until I came to
remove Canon's 'Zoom Browser".

There is an uninstaller for Zoom Browser but would you believe that
after it had been run and reported complete removal of everything to
do with Zoom Browser, Revo went on to find another 165 program files
and 6065 registry entries! I hate to think how many program files and
registry entries *before* Canon's unistaller was set to work.

6065 registry entries! Bloody Ridiculous!

Be happy you didn't have to do that manually as I once upon a time had
to do with a Norton AV de-install.

--
"If war is God's way of teaching Americans geography, then
recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics."
..Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing.

On 2017-05-05 05:06, Eric Stevens wrote:

The idea of a registry makes a certain idea of sense (and I don't
intend to join you in an argument about this) but it was Canon who
came up with the need of a *ridiculous* number or registry entries. I
have never encountered any other software which comes anywhere near
it.

All bad ideas make a certain amount of sense before implementation.

If the phrase "unintended consequences" hadn't existed, WR would have
spawned it.

Did you delve into why Canon have so many registry entries? It probably
makes sense once you "accept" the notion of a Windows Registry being
"needed" in an OS.

--
"If war is God's way of teaching Americans geography, then
recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics."
..Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing.

On 2017-05-05 05:08, Eric Stevens wrote:

I haven't encountered any other software which
requires so many (but I haven't had to deal with Windows Office).

I recall Norton AV requiring hundreds of entries. I know - I had to
manually remove each one.


--
"If war is God's way of teaching Americans geography, then
recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics."
..Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing.

In article , MC wrote:

Sandman:
No idea, but the amount shouldn't really matter that much really.
My .plist file for BBEdit, a popular text editor for Mac, is 9,696
lines long and is 262 KB large. And .plist files are the
"standard" format for preferences in OSX, but they are all kept in
separate files rather than in a DB as with the registry.

There is some fear about the registry that is unneeded. Windows
sometimes have problems with registry corruption where something
happens and the registry gets messed up, but it's only the SYSTEM
part that leads to actual system problems, when you're in user
space, at most you lose your settings, which of course can happen
with preferences files as well.

Also, the idea behind the registry is very forward thinking and is a
very efficient way to deal with system references.

I agree, the registry gets a bad rep just because it can, and have, messed up
peoples systems - and when it does it can be pretty severe. But obviously
most of the time it works as it should.

OK, so, in days of old when computers were much, much "slower" the
clogging up of the registry may have resulted in the computer having
to do a little more work (as is/was the case with any database) but
these days it matters very little how many redundant entries are in
the registry.

Also, even in the old Windows 95, the DB approach was still more effective
than the older Windows 3.1 "INI" files.

Even so, as the op has found, there a million ways of
cleaning out the junk (which is primarily down to the bad uninstall
routines of third party developers) in a simple and, again,
efficient manner.

Yes, but my point is that there is no actual need to "clean" it out. In fact,
the registry keeps all his personal preferences for a program, and should he
ever re-install the program, it can be quite beneficial to find that all his
settings are still kept - which is of course why the uninstaller doesn't
uninstall it - just like on OSX, where (most) apps are just a folder in
/Applications and when you drag it to the trash you throw only away the
application and its binaries, while the user preferences are kept tin
~/Library/Preferences/[app].plist

There is no reason why your computer should be effected because of
registry clog up and, as long you keep a regular backup of your
registry, registry corruption.

Also, "registry clog up" is a myth. Sure, I bet there have been cases of
misbehaving applications getting stuck in a loop filling the registry up with
gigabytes of data, but for any normal scenario, the registry doesn't "clog
up" and the user never ever have to think about it.

--
Sandman

In article , MC
wrote:


There is no reason why your computer should be effected because of
registry clog up and, as long you keep a regular backup of your
registry, registry corruption.

Also, "registry clog up" is a myth. Sure, I bet there have been cases
of misbehaving applications getting stuck in a loop filling the
registry up with gigabytes of data, but for any normal scenario, the
registry doesn't "clog up" and the user never ever have to think
about it.

What I mean by "clog up" is the redundant entries amassed by poorly
unistalled programs etc. slowing down the decrepit Windows systems of
days gone by that had to troll through the quagmire. OK, so it was
not really a big deal then but it is even less so today because systems
are faster and more efficient. Also, application developers, on the
whole, have become better in managing registry usage.

I would not mind betting that most of those who bemoan the registry
concept are those who are current Mac users or early registry users
from the distant past who found their system constantly troubled by
registry problems (most of which were probably self inflicted by the
user anyway).

that's because mac users see the registry for what a cluster**** it
really is.

windows users, most of whom never have used a mac, don't know any other
way. it's all they know, therefore it must be good.

On Fri, 5 May 2017 12:41:52 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2017-05-05 05:06, Eric Stevens wrote:

The idea of a registry makes a certain idea of sense (and I don't
intend to join you in an argument about this) but it was Canon who
came up with the need of a *ridiculous* number or registry entries. I
have never encountered any other software which comes anywhere near
it.

All bad ideas make a certain amount of sense before implementation.

If the phrase "unintended consequences" hadn't existed, WR would have
spawned it.

Did you delve into why Canon have so many registry entries? It probably
makes sense once you "accept" the notion of a Windows Registry being
"needed" in an OS.

Just about everything else I have deleted has only a small number
registry entries - typically 2 to 4 with a maximum of maybe 12.
However the list for Zoombrowser goes on and on and on ... .

I've tried to guess the philosophy behind it and the best I could come
up with was some kind of macro-language, but who knows? Apart from
Canon that is.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Fri, 5 May 2017 12:34:59 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

"Sandman" wrote

| There is some fear about the registry that is unneeded.

That's true. One need only run Procmon from
Sysinternals to get a peek. Starting IE results in
some 8,500 Registry reads and file access actions,
in the one second it takes me to switch window
focus and stop the monitoring. Those reads are not
slowing down my system. And in general they're
pointless. IE is not reading 8,500 settings. It's
reading the same stuff, over and over again. Why?
I have no idea. My only guess is that MS want to
obfuscate the specific settings in order to reduce
tweaking.

I'd be far more nervous about running CCleaner,
Revo Uninstaller, or any other handyman tool that's
supposed to "clean up". It's just risky nonsense.
And what is Canon's Zoom Browser doing on the
system in the first place?

I once owned a Canon G12 and Zoom Browser is just a part of the stuff
which came with it.

Note that Eric doesn't mention what all the Registry
entries are that Revo claims it removed. He doesn't
know what should be there and what shouldn't. Did
the program present a list for his approval? If it did
he apparently didn't understand the list. Yet he allowed
this freebie trinket to edit his Registry.

You are assuming a lot and clearly have no ida of the information that
was presented to me. In fact Revo presented me with a graphical map of
the relevant registry trees. This will normally only allow the removal
of entries at the very bottom of the tree and in some cases it gives
warnings. Individual items from the list for deletion can be selected
or rejected for removal.

The vast majority of Windows programs have
decent installers and uninstallers.

As I said previously, I have used Revo to clean out a number of
computers and I can say that your comment is wrong. It is my
experience that even though the majority of Windows uninstallers will
blithely tell you that they have removed all program files and
registry entries, Revo will go on to find quite a number more. The
Canon situation with which I started this thead is but an extreme
example.

*After* the Canon uninstaller had run Revo found 165 more files and
6065 registry entries that the uninstaller had missed. It is my
experience that it is a rare uninstaller which collects everything.

Microsoft themselves
are one of the worst, foisting all sorts of crap and
then making it unremovable. Device companies like HP
can also impose an awfully lot of unasked-for slop.
But most of the Registry entries left behind by programs
will be under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software.
They'll be handy if the
program is reinstalled later. Anyone who gets a kick out
of housecleaning can always go to that key and remove
whatever they like. There's very little risk in most cases.
But the logic of streamlining just doesn't hold. Those are
settings that won't be active. They're doing no harm. To
think of them as obstructuin is like cleaning dustballs from
under one's bed and then feeling satisfied that the weight
load has been decreased on the floor joists.

--

Regards,

Eric Stevens