XP Pro Questions

Ok - if its broke don't fix it but after 5 years with nary a problem with 98SE I bought and installed an XP Pro upgrade. Installation went OK (I kept my HD squeaky clean and free from nasties) and then after some hours of sorting out and reinstalling some hardware + the Feb004 MS Security upgrade things have settled down and I will learn to love this OS in timeI guess.
Question 1 - the registry is a massive 49mbs even after running regcleaner etc over it. 98se was never more than 10Mb - is the huge increase normal??
Question 2 - I used to regularly open in DOS with 98se and do regclean /fix or regclean /opt when the situation dictated. How does one do the equivalent of this please? I am fully aware that I can do a restore but I really do like a registry without too many blank holes in it.
Thanks Folks
Robert

 

There is no equivalent of regclean built into XP.

My registry is 23mb. Thats measuring the 5 hive files that compose the registry:

System
Security
Default
Software
Sam

So I would say that unless you have a whole slew of apps installed, its probably one of those quirky upgrade issues.

Edit: MA beat me to it

 

Many Thanks for the advice. After a few more days experience with the XP Beast I am now whittling the registry down using a combination of RegCleaner Supreme, and RegSeeker both of which are finding scads of redundant items on each occasion I fire up XP. Totally agree with clean install which I should have done and I may still do it if I have any trouble. The one area that I do not like is fattening index.dat files associated with IE6 which regseeker claims it can fix - the juries out on that. Meanwhile as long as the Regleaners continue to sweep out the gunk and the OS does'nt play silly buggars with me I will continue as is. Again many thanks good people - access to this site is a wonderful insurance policy
Cheers from Sunny but Cold Canberra
Robert

 

Another thing that may help is the registry compactor included with ERUNT, which is also handy for registry backups.

 

Post Script on Xp Registry.
Now trimmed back to 24MB which is within bounds of acceptability given advice above. XP is now run in and running sweetly and looks to be faster than 98SE. I will work on it trying to exercise MS control over me rather than me exercising control over what I want it to do - thus far I'm winning. I was very surprised at how it was able to handle some of the really ancient but lovable old programs I have had since 3.1 days. More surprised that I had to reinstall some quite modern hardware.
Thanks for ERUNT which I have downloaded and will try.
Robert

 

I wonder where you find those registry files? i mean, where can i see how big my registry is?

thx & greets

 

The system registry is kept in:

%systemroot%/system32/config

%systemroot% points to wherever your windows or winnt directory is.

in my case, C:/Windows/System32/Config.

 

thank you