Windows Registry

[SLF 999]

Does anyone know of a registry edit program which will scan the registry and flag up orphaned or invalid entries and perform maintenance on the registry.

I know I could use regedit but this would take ages, Im looking for a reasonably quick way of doing this.

Obviously Ill back up the registry prior to starting any potentially damaging maintenance. (Just in case !!!) :D

[FlyingGiraffe]

Hi SLF,

Microsoft had a utility called "regclean" which did exactly what it says on the tin... nearly. Unfortunately it was never really taken to product strength and I think MS got bored with complaints of trashed registry databases and pulled it.

There are some third party ones out there... must admit to never having used them myself though, so it really is a case of "caveat downloader" :rolleyes:

Here are a few: WinSite Windows Registry Tools (http://www.winsite.com/tech/reg/)

Hope that helps...

[HandyAndy]

SLF,

Believe this little proggie may well do what you require. I use it and it does a good job.

RegCleaner can be found at h**p://www.jv16.org and comes highly recommended.

Best!
HA

[SLF 999]

Thanks for your help and Ill let you know how it goes, hopefully without rebuilding my machine !! :D

Program downloaded, registry backed up, registry cleaned , machine rebooted, no problems.
Thanks again

[ 30 August 2001: Message edited by: SLF 999 ]

[What_does_this_button_do?]

Never under estimate the registry - one wrong move and you're snookered!

Windows 98 instructions for backuping up the registry (from Microsoft)

To manually back up the registry using Registry Checker
1. On the Start menu, click Run.
2. Type scanregw.exe, and click OK.
First Registry Checker verifies that the registry is structurally sound. If the registry is sound, Registry Checker offers to back it up. Registry Checker will back up the registry and store the compressed CAB file in \Windows\Sysbckup (a hidden directory).

If the registry structure is sound but a content change is keeping the computer from booting, then you need to manually restore from a backup using the following procedure.

To restore the backup manually
1. On the Start menu, click Shut Down.
2. Select Restart in MS-DOS mode and click OK.
3. At the MS-DOS command prompt, type scanreg /restore.
4. Select the latest known good backup. Backed up, compressed registry files are listed with the name Rbxxx.cab. The files show the time and date of backup. Next to each CAB file are the words Started or Not Started. Started means that the file has successfully started Windows 98, and is a known good file. Not Started means that the file has never been used to start Windows 98, so it is not a known good file.