Compressing my registry

I use Windows 98, and I was wondering if compressing my registry would give me better playing performance/FPS in UT/Q3 etc... I would if I could, but I get "Click the program that is needed to open 'Exit to Dos.pif' when trying to restart my computer in MS-DOS mode to enter 'CD \Windows, scanreg /opt, win'. Somehow I must have 'dismissed' a certain needed file. If anyone knows which file(s) that would be, I'd like to know along with the answer to my 1st question. -Thanks.

Compressing your registry makes games run faster?

Here's some reasons why I'm a skeptic:

1.) Compressing anything requires your computer to decompress it in order to use it. This uses a LOT of CPU, thus making a compressed registry slower than a non-compressed one.

2.) I have never heard of having the ability to compress your registry in Windows 98.

3.) Games, such as Quake 3, do not rely off of the registry to run. The registry just stores the settings... The actual game has nothing to do with the registry. There is absolutely no reason that doing anything to your registry aside from changing settings will increase performance.

Perhaps you meant something else? Such as optimizing the registry which can be done by scanreg /fix in command prompt if I'm not mistaken. I think it may actually be another switch.. I can't remember. This supposedly "streamlines" the registry, albiet very little. You will get absolutely NO performance gain for gaming, or anything else for that matter.

You'll prolly get more benefit just "cleaning" your registry a bit. You can use a program such a RegCleaner. It allows you to remove useless keys from uninstalled programs or Temporary keys. It's very powerfull & it does a backup of every key that you remove in a .reg file. Very nice Program

Don't do it. Don't even touch the registry. You could really screw up your computer from there. I don't even think it would help at all...

There is also an undocumented switch for SCANREG (besides /FIX), is /OPT. It's supposed to work on WinME, but I've use it on Win98 (still don't know what it does exactly...)

Registry maintenance tools are more, but I've found the following to work best: JV16 PowerTools (http://www.jv16.org/ - the next generation of RegCleaner), MS RegClean (available someplace at www.microsoft.com), System Mechanic (a set of utilities from www.iolo.com) and Norton WinDoctor (comes with any version of Norton Utilities, very useful).