Windows Me Annoyances

Compacting the Registry

As you may have noticed, your Registry can become quite large. This is due, in part, to the empty space inside your Registry files. If you’re familiar with the way data is stored in the Registry, you know that the Registry is a database. As with all databases, when information is removed or added, the database file is not rewritten entirely (in order to improve performance). Instead, new information is simply appended to the end of the file, and gaps are left in the file where information has been removed. After a lot of use, this can cause the files that make up the Registry to become enormous. See Figure 3-3 for a diagram of this process.

Figure 3-3. The process by which the Registry accumulates empty space

Compacting any database file like the Registry involves reading all of the settings and then writing them, in order, into a new file. This way, the empty space is eliminated and the entries are stored consecutively, resulting in less wasted space and better performance.

If you wanted to compact your Registry in Windows 95, you had to go through a long, convoluted process that involved making a Registry patch of the entire Registry and then rebuilding it from within DOS. In Windows 98, not only is there an included utility that can compact the Registry, it is done for you automatically whenever the amount of wasted space goes above 500 KB.

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