Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Miscellaneous Good Stuff

So far in this book, you’ve learned how to use a variety of tools to modify, back up, and restore the Registry. At this point, though, you might be wondering what you can actually do with some of these tools. There are some common and necessary administrative tasks involving the Registry; knowing how to perform them will help keep the machines under your care stable, secure, and safe.

Changing the Registry Size

Since the Registry is a collection of hives, most of which are actually disk files, you might not realize that Windows 2000 (and NT) actually maps the entire Registry into memory. Doing so makes it possible for Registry calls to perform efficiently; however, it means that as the Registry grows it takes up a larger proportion of the virtual memory space in your system. To prevent the Registry from sucking up too much space in the system’s page file, the system maintains an internal parameter called the Registry Size Limit, or RSL. The RSL sets an upper bound on how much address space the Registry may occupy; however, as you add software and users to your machines, the Registry gets larger. If it gets so big that it starts to bump up against the RSL, problems will occur. (Go to the Microsoft Knowledge Base at http://www.microsoft.com/kb/default.asp and search for “Maximum Registry Size” to see a long list of such problems, most of which are reasonably obscure.)

By default, the RSL is set at about 20-25% of the total virtual memory allocation for the ...