WinUAE exposing how crappy Windows is

[LoadWB]

I think its safe to say your case is an exception. The place I work at has a constant flow of PC issues with their (mostly) XP stations. Stations are restored from images pretty routinely to keep everything chugging along.

I would say not.  I have workstations at several sites which are running XP loads which are now over four years old.  They have not replaced the machines due to budget constraints, but we have upgraded most of them to 1GB of memory.

In my professional experience -- and before anyone jumps on the "dfense of microshaft shyte" bandwagon, know that I support and work on several operating systems, so shove it -- when any of these machines have had to be reloaded, and especially numerous times, we finally tracked the problem to bad hardware.  In could, in fact, quantify the problem if I went through my notes of the past eight years to specific percentages of failures which were hard drives, RAM, and motherboard, in that order.  In a couple of cases a bad video card was the culprit.

A lot of people will quickly blame a driver when it crashes.  Frankly, it is an amateur mistake and pretty common.  The driver will crash, the updated driver will crash, so the assumption is the driver is crap and replacement hardware is installed.  Voila, accidental solution.  But what really happens is the failed hardware causes the driver to crash, and usually only happens, especially in the case of video cards, once Windows activates the advanced features of the device.  So, then it looks like Windows did it.

15 years professional experience in this industry and I can tell you with full confidence that there are a good number of people out there who will curse and swear at the wrong things, presenting themselves as experts, but each is really a rank amateur with not a real clue of how things work.

Those kinds of people make me a good deal of money.

[Pyromania]

Easy fix: Change to a Linux distro and run Windows in a virtualbox. If it you get too much junk, delete a HDD file and use a back up.
Otherwise there is XP Lite which installs the minimal functions so it easier to see if something is there that shouldn't be.

Yup

[psxphill]

Files are easy enough to clean up(even if spread all over). The windows registry on the other hand is just awful. Wish they would spend their billions finding a better option after all these years.

The registry is just like a file system. Registry keys are no different to files.
 
If symantec wrote Amiga virus checkers, they would find a way to screw over your installation.

[KThunder]

There are drawbacks and quirks to any software system, and no matter how carefully designed Windows is it has more than just Microsoft fiddling with it. If we were locked into only one video, audio, i/o, etc. chipset and programs limited to only a couple megs of ram and floppy discs things would be very different.

This is how Apple computers potentially are more stable. I say potentially because a friend of mine has had more crashes and problems on his mac laptop than I have had on my xp laptop, my wifes 7 laptop and my xp desktop combined.

Amiga os increased significantly in size and complexity from os 1.3 to 3.9 and if it had been updated another half dozen times would likely have rivaled xp in complexity and problems.

[AmigaHeretic]

The registry is just like a file system. Registry keys are no different to files.

I what way do you mean?   The reg files are just one big .txt file basically.  That is why it's slower for the OS to search through the bigger it gets.

Programs like "regedit" load the text file and arrange it so it looks like it's arranged more like your typical directory structure, but it's got no real directory structure of course.


The main problem really is that there is no way for a person to clean it.

If a program installs keys like {58512179-5E5E-4431-B982-621CD856B1F9} and all the key values don't indicate what program it's from, how do I know if it is left over or something important?  


You can export all the reg files combined into one big file.  Just open regedit minimize all the branches until just "Computer" is showing, highlight it and then choose export.  You have a huge text file of your entire registry.

If anyone ever has the chance, do a clean Windows install and export the registry to a single file.  Then install Adobe Reader and Quicktime.  Export the reg again to a 2nd file.  You can compare these in your favorite text edit programs(use something like ExamDiff to compare them at once and see what has been added).  Now uninstall Adobe Reader and Quicktime and then export a 3rd text file.  Compare the 1st and 3rd to see how much is left over.

Then figure out how you could possibly ever identify all the leftover stuff in the 3rd file, let alone clean it with out making Windows fail to ever boot again.

[mongo]

I what way do you mean?   The reg files are just one big .txt file basically.  That is why it's slower for the OS to search through the bigger it gets.

Programs like "regedit" load the text file and arrange it so it looks like it's arranged more like your typical directory structure, but it's got no real directory structure of course.

No. The registry is stored as a hierarchical database. It's nothing at all like a big .txt file.

The main problem really is that there is no way for a person to clean it.

If a program installs keys like {58512179-5E5E-4431-B982-621CD856B1F9} and all the key values don't indicate what program it's from, how do I know if it is left over or something important?  

There's generally no reason for a person to clean it.

[AmigaHeretic]

No. The registry is stored as a hierarchical database. It's nothing at all like a big .txt file.
There's generally no reason for a person to clean it.

Which is basically one big text file.  I don't know what data structure the text is in nor the BigO() search times, but no matter what the more data you have the slower the search, regardless of the structure.  

If 2/3 of your registry is un-used information then you are just slowing things down.


Again, I mostly talking about people that install, uninstall lots of programs to test them, etc.  The older your Windows install gets the slower the reg will get.  On the Amiga this is non issue as there is no registry.  We can unLha stuff to ram.  If it's not what we want the delete it or reboot.  

If you have an office computer that has a pre-setup sytem and nothing ever really changes then the reg will stay the same size and this is a non-issue.  As far as the registry I'm saying I know a better way than the way MS does it.  Other than not having one at all.

As far as I know the only real way to clean the registry when it gets old, scary, and hairy is a reformat reinstall.


EDIT:
Obviously when I talk about searching the registry, pretty much every operation done to the registry requires a search right?  Find, Modify, Add, Delete.  If a program wants to find a setting it has to do a 'search', if it is changing a setting it has to do a 'search' to find it to change, if you are installing software or a program is adding things it has to 'search' to find where that information goes, if you are uninstalling or a program is deleting a setting from the reg it has to 'search' for what it needs to be delete.

[LoadWB]

I what way do you mean?   The reg files are just one big .txt file basically.  That is why it's slower for the OS to search through the bigger it gets.

Actually, the Windows registry is a modified binary-tree database which uses the Jet database engine to operate, much like just about every other system database: Active Directory, DHCP server, DNS server, etc.  With the exception that at boot, ntldr determines the size of the SYSTEM hive and loads it in its entirety into paged pool memory.

[AmigaHeretic]

Actually, the Windows registry is a modified binary-tree database which uses the Jet database engine to operate, much like just about every other system database: Active Directory, DHCP server, DNS server, etc.  With the exception that at boot, ntldr determines the size of the SYSTEM hive and loads it in its entirety into paged pool memory.

So search times are Θ(log n) in the average case and Ω(n) in the worst case?

n is the number of registry entries.  So the more n the slower it is.

[LoadWB]

So search times are Θ(log n) in the average case and Ω(n) in the worst case?

n is the number of registry entries.  So the more n the slower it is.

Relevant to my point how?  Yes, I took those classes in CS as well (with flying colors,) and, really, search performance in a memory-based registry file is almost irrelevant in terms versus computing power available.  In any case, we can only theorize to the performance of the registry unless we run our own tests against it since Microsoft is well known for not publishing performance benchmarks.

But in any case, my point was not to argue semantics of search algorithms but rather to displace misinformation which seems to flow freely in bashing circles -- irrespective of what is being bashed.

[AmigaHeretic]

Relevant to my point how?  Yes, I took those classes in CS as well (with flying colors,) and, really, search performance in a memory-based registry file is almost irrelevant in terms versus computing power available.  In any case, we can only theorize to the performance of the registry unless we run our own tests against it since Microsoft is well known for not publishing performance benchmarks.

But in any case, my point was not to argue semantics of search algorithms but rather to displace misinformation which seems to flow freely in bashing circles -- irrespective of what is being bashed.

Your point? Some was asked me why you would want a clean registry.  Among other things I suggest it will slow the system down. A 20MB reg file but it is filled with 80MB of garbage for a total of 100MB.

The only clrear fact is that the registry gets bloated with crap overtime.  If you think there is no speed penalty for loading in a 100MB file vs a 20MB files and dealing with that data, then I guess we are at a disagreement.

[Golem!dk]

@AmigaHeretic

So do you have any benchmarks showing how much it affects application performance?

Oh and do you think my amiga apps would run faster if I cleaned out old gunk from envarc: too?

[Daedalus]

Wow, how big is your envarc: after getting? I know Amiga file systems might be slow to find things, but when an application wants a setting, it doesn't touch the envarc:, just env: which is RAM based like the registry. The difference is you're extremely unlikely to have anywhere near as many entries in env: as you have in your registry. Finding a particular file should be almost instantaneous, even with the lack of processing horsepower in Amigas.

[Karlos]

So search times are Θ(log n) in the average case and Ω(n) in the worst case?

n is the number of registry entries.  So the more n the slower it is.

All search algorithms get slower as the number of items to search increases. O(log n) is typical for tree search. A hundred fold increase in N does not equate to a hundred fold increase in time taken.

Searching through a flat file database almost certainly faster than trawling through a directory tree to find an environment variable...

[Iceburg]

Actually, the Windows registry is a modified binary-tree database which uses the Jet database engine to operate, much like just about every other system database: Active Directory, DHCP server, DNS server, etc.  With the exception that at boot, ntldr determines the size of the SYSTEM hive and loads it in its entirety into paged pool memory.

Yep this is correct. Large reg files will affect system performance at boot but this is not the only culprit. It will slow your boot up times but after that it is other crap that is running in the background. All the useless loaders and TSR's hogging up resources. Drives that are not defragged or organized well.

One of the things I do at my shop is "Tune Up's" for Windows based machines. Most users that aren't "geeks" just have no clue what it takes for maintenance on thier machines. This is what I do for a TuneUp.

1. Delete all temp files. Windows,Office Internet ect.(Keep Passwords)
2. Empty Recycle Bin.
3. Drive space and partitions permitting, Move My Documents to a different drive or partition. The messier your system drive the longer it takes to load.
4. Reg Backup before cleaning.
4 Clean registry with CCleaner or Regvac. I have an average of about 1000 invalid entries per machine but have seen some in the 10,000.
4. Defrag the drive(s) with a good defrag program. I use PerfectDisk but there are some very good free ones out there. Don't use the Windows Defrag. All it does is tighten up the drive. If your drive(s) get fragged really bad (45%+)it might be best to start over because you will almost never get it cleaned up.
5. Depending on the amount of Ram and Drive space I adjust the Virtual Memory. Windows does a terrible job at this. This is mostly for machines with a gig or less but it can be beneficial for power users also.
6. Reg Tweaks for a lot of things but this depends on the user. Google is your friend!

Another thing I do is virus/ad/mal scanning as well as duplicate file removal on all machines that I tune.

I have been running the same install of XP on this specific machine for almost 3 years now because I am anal about maintenance. Here are my rules.

1. Defrag after each install or uninstall. Use a second party uninstaller like Revo.
2. Run CCleaner or RegVac weekly.
3. Keep all data files separate from System. I run 3 partitions... System, Programs, Data. System is on a drive by itself.
4. Most important if you can...BACKUP.
5. Defrag at no more than 20%. Defrag sys files on startup also. Some programs defrag constantly if the PC is idle.
6. Do a hard start every day.(If you leave your machine on.)
7. Delete temp files every week.
8. Remove or archive downloads.
There is much more you can do but these are the basics.

[AmigaHeretic]

All search algorithms get slower as the number of items to search increases. O(log n) is typical for tree search. A hundred fold increase in N does not equate to a hundred fold increase in time taken.

No, you're right, it would increase at 'log n'.  How many keys are in an actually registry?  I don't know that I've seen a way to count them.  You can figure out how many bytes all your hives are and usually that is in 10's or 100's or millions of bytes.

How often are the hives being searched? How often is actually modifying keys and sorting?

Searching through a flat file database almost certainly faster than trawling through a directory tree to find an environment variable...

If we are talking ENV: vs registry, there are maybe 50 files in my registry?  vs millions of entries in my reg?