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[JimH]

... would fix the file association and orphaned Registry entry issues I see though.

I've never understood why orphaned registry entries were a problem.  The argument, for many years, was that the bigger the registry, the worse the performance.  I've never seen any proof of that.

I almost never visit the registry on my machines.  Maybe once a year.  Maybe.

[leezer3]

I've never understood why orphaned registry entries were a problem.  The argument, for many years, was that the bigger the registry, the worse the performance.  I've never seen any proof of that.

I almost never visit the registry on my machines.  Maybe once a year.  Maybe.

That would be the agenda being pushed by systwm tuner / registry cleaner vendors :p

There probably is a small speed increase from a smaller registry, but as a programer myself I can tell you it'll be intefessimal at best......

[RoderickGI]

I've never understood why orphaned registry entries were a problem.

That is a very valid point Jim. Most of the time it makes no difference a far as I can tell. At least as long as hard drives get faster and CPUs more powerful. Years back I did see performance issues when my Registry was cluttered with junk. The issue spawned a whole industry and category of applications, whether they did any good or more harm than good.

I am in the Registry pretty often, because I run a bunch of applications that break sometimes, and can only be fixed in the Registry. Or at least understood. Windows being one of them sometimes! I never reinstall Windows to fix problems (I understand you don't either), I fix the cause. But many people do just reinstall Windows at the drop of a hat to fix quite minor issues which can often be fixed with a minor Registry change.

While it is pretty common knowledge that people with messy desks are more creative, and my desk can be pretty messy whether I qualify as creative or not, I still like the "Tidy desk, tidy mind" idea. That applies to software as well, as far as I'm concerned. If an application leaves lots of Registry entries behind when it is uninstalled, it makes me question what is going on in the application itself, and how competent the programmer is. (Sorry)

Most Anti-virus providers have had to build special "uninstall all our stuff" or "clean up our Registry settings" utilities at some stage or another just to stop their software from breaking Windows, their own application, or other applications. Usually in response to the new category of third party "Uninstallers" that did more harm than good, mostly.

It is just good etiquette to clean up after oneself as well. Microsoft certainly encourages it. But sure, there is no direct revenue in it.

Of course, there are a few common Registry entries between MC versions, such as DirectShow filter registration. That just complicates the issue.

As an intellectual exercise, search your Registry for "Media Center 23", "MediaCenter.23", "mc23.exe", and "mc23". Then change the version to say 20, 18, or earlier. You may be surprised. Some of it is Windows caused junk, like mime types, but even though I have cleaned up the main Media Center entries for old versions, File Association records are still in there going back to the first version I installed, MC18.


Anyway, File Associations are a bigger issue for me.

[RoderickGI]

BTW, good deflection Jim. 

I'm not sure it would produce zero revenue.

I'm sure you analyse the new and upgrade sales volumes, and the statistics collected when MC is uninstalled, so you know if there might be a potential to retain more paying customers. Maybe you have already quantified how many people would continue upgrading if the process was easier. 

[JimH]

While it is pretty common knowledge that people with messy desks are more creative, and my desk can be pretty messy whether I qualify as creative or not, I still like the "Tidy desk, tidy mind" idea.

My desk is messier than your desk.

[RoderickGI]

My desk is messier than your desk.

My desk is pretty tidy at the moment. I can still see the surface in most areas!

But you are a painter, so I'd expect your desk to be piled high with stuff, and probably multicoloured!

Still deflecting. 

[JimH]

How's your summer down there?  We could use a little here.  We're driving on the lakes now.

[RoderickGI]

 

Very hot! 40°C plus today in Melbourne.

We could do with some of that ice around here. But not that much. Although ice skating down the Yarra river would be fun.

[Spike1000]

That is a very valid point Jim. Most of the time it makes no difference a far as I can tell.

I look at it this way:
You get a builder in to work on your house for a few days while you're living in it. One sweeps up and hoovers at the end of every day and leaves everything tidy. One leaves everything as it is with tools and dust everywhere. At the end of the work the result is the same, but which one gets invited back/recommended to friends?

Spike

[rossp]

Usually the cheapest one

Ross

[newsposter]

Once Upon a Time, the Windows Registry was a memory-mapped 'file' that wasn't managed very well.

As some point in the late 1990s, MSFT thought that it was a good idea (performance) to change the well-thought-out (and implemented by people who knew what they were doing, DEC and IBM) NT programming practice of locking kernel and core drivers to cpu ring 0, secondary device drivers to ring 1, and user-code in upper rings.  In its place, it became an unmanaged free-for-all that allowed pretty much anything in ring 0 and 1, including user code.  So of course, user code, being what it is, had (and still has) the ability to crash the kernel, and along with it memory management, including the management of the registry.

Bad JuJu.  Took years for Server to recover from this.  And desktop/workstation has yet to recover.  Add in the recent cpu microcode / hyperthread protection problems and it's not getting any better for desktop/workstation.

Back to registry.  As a memory-mapped file, it was subject to corruption whenever ring 0/1 bluescreen crashes occurred.  To minimize that, it was discovered that by keeping the registry under 32kb-1 byte in size, most corruption could be avoided.

With Server 2008, the registry was returned to a real file (jet db really) to try and kill off system crash/corruption problems.  But it took a while for legacy systems to be updated/replaced.  So the practice of trimming the registry down persists.

But now we add in hyperthreading and Intels firmware/hardware problems.....................