Optimising the registry

Once you’ve found & removed all invalid entries the next step is to compress/optimise the registry. Deleting entries doesn’t change the size of the registry until you compress it. Compressing it removes any unused space, making it smaller & faster.

There’s an easy way & a not so easy way to compress the Windows registry. First we’ll do it the easy way. You’ll only need to use the not-so-easy-way if you are on Windows95.

The easy way

1. If you have Windows 98, restart in MS-DOS mode.
2. Type in CD\WINDOWS & press enter.
3. Type in scanreg /opt & press enter (The /opt command-line switch causes the Registry Checker tool to optimise the registry by removing unused space). You can read more scanreg options here.
4. Type in win & press enter to restart Windows.

Not so easy way

In order to do this you'll need to download fixreg. This will check & correct any errors that may arise when re-importing the compressed registry.

1. Delete as many unnecessary files as you can, e.g. delete the Windows\Temp folder of its contents, not the folder itself.
2. Run regclean, then EasyCleaner, removing invalid registry entries with them. Then restart your PC in MS-DOS mode.
3. Type CD\WINDOWS & press enter to go into your Windows directory.
4. Type SMARTDRV.EXE & press enter, this may speed up the next few processes a little.
5. Enter in regedit /e old.reg & press Enter, this will export the registry into your Windows directory, the file being called old.reg.
6. Enter in regedit /c old.reg & press Enter, this will import a compressed version of the registry, i.e. old.reg.
7. Type win & press enter, this will load up Windows.
8. Load up Fixreg & select the old.reg file. This will make sure that no errors occurred during the importation of old.reg.

Conclusion

Your registry will now be optimized & contain a lot of useful tweaks to it. This will improve speed & is also a useful way of restricting/limiting user access on your PC. It’s also a great way of enhancing functionality in Windows.

A Printable version of this article can be found here.

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