Windoz

[mikeymike]

There's a handy little DOS command on Win98 to manage the registry called SCANREG.

scanreg /fix
claims to fix registry corruption

scanreg /opt
claims to optimise/compact the registry

[mikeymike]

Whenever you want to install some app that you don't trust, run regedit, export (save) your registry and install the application. If something goes wrong, you can easily replace new registry with old one.

A: it's a good way of doubling the size of your registry (if you do a "restore")

and B: exporting from regedit and importing won't delete keys that have been created.  It'll only restore keys that had gone missing.

No version of Win32 compacts its own registry.  If keys are deleted, the space left behind isn't cleaned up.  Scanreg for Win98 reportedly compacts the (win9x)  registry, but that's the only known method.

[mikeymike]

Are you saying that imporing previously exported *.reg would not bring it back to it's original state?

Importing a reg file will never remove any existing keys.  It's an odd thing for a security feature to come from MS, but this is one of the few.  If a reg file did provide a means of deleting keys, then someone could send you one, you open it, and you have no registry left.

re: OS reliability and co

NTx is what Windows should have been in 1996.  NT4/2k/XP is far less temperamental, a far more ideal learning platform than 9x.