Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and registry

TweakUI alternative for a networked PC?

monkeyforest — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:46:46 -0800

LockdownFilter: Is there an feature-similar alternative to TweakUI that will run on a networked PC where Regedit & tweakUI are disabled by the administrator? All I want to do is edit/delete the 'new filetype' icons in the Windows XP context (right-click) menu. I've found the simplest way to do this has been to use tweakUI, but it has been disabled by the domain administrator(s) of the PC I am currently using. Access to the other features of TweakUI would be nice as well!

XP unusably slow after STOP errors and running checkdisk - what's going on?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:29:42 -0800

So it's come to this - I see no other option than to ask a "help me fix my PC" question. After some troubleshooting the STOP errors seem to have been resolved, XP now boots successfully but is excruciating slow to the point of being unusable. Details and specs below the fold. Specifications:
-Intel Celeron 2.4GHz
-1 x 512 MB RAM
-XP Pro SP2
-PCI Firewire card
-onboard: USB 2.0, VIA Gigabit Ethernet adapter

IDE config:

1M: HD Maxtor 80 GB U-ATA
1S: empty
2M: DVD Burner
2S: DVD-ROM

First, the BIOS would occasionally fail to find the boot device (HD). Setting the primary master to "Not Installed" and rebooting, and then back to "Auto" remedied this for the time being.

Then a few days ago the machine started throwing a bunch of BSODs during normal operation. I recorded some of them for your viewing pleasure:

0x000000F4, 0x00000003, 0x829FF020, 0x829FF194 0xc000000E, 0xC000000E, 0x00000000, 0x05357000 0x0000007A (0XC03E1128, 0XC0000185, 0XF844A074, 0X08195860) ACPI.SYS 0x0000008E (0XC0000005, 0X8054AE34, 0XF6505BF4, 0X00000000)

Eventually XP wouldn't boot at all: system32/config was 'corrupted', or something along those lines. I assume this happened as a result of one of the STOP errors.

For some reason CHKDSK wouldn't run on this machine, so I took out the drive and ran CHKDSK on it with the drive attached to another machine. It did find a bunch of errors and corrected them all.

I put it back in its own box, and ran CHKDSK again from the Recovery Console (ran fine this time, and found no errors) and also a FIXBOOT for good measure.

Which brings us to the current situation. The system32/config error is gone, and Windows does boot, *but*:

-The XP splash screen fades in very slowly and seems halted here and there.
-Upon logon, the desktop background loads but no icons or taskbar appear.
-I can load explorer and systray via taskmgr, and sometimes they eventually load on their own without intervention, but this takes a *long* time. Somewhere in the ten minutes order of magnitude.

So technically speaking, Windows now runs, but it's so excruciatingly slow it's basically unusable.

Additional details:
-I have run a Spybot Search & Destroy scan: it found some threats and removed them. No new findings upon further boots and/or Spybot runs.
-I would scan for viruses, but I can't install AVG Free: I just removed the old 7.1 version (had to anyway as it was no longer supported), and the 7.5 installer happily skips from "pick a directory" to "Installation Complete!" but never seems to have touched a file at all! Doesn't even create the specified directory in Program Files.
-Network now also doesn't work. The Network Connections window says "Connected" but the machine receives no IP address nor lease from router. Router and rest of network are running fine.
-I tried System Restore with a variety of restore points from the past two weeks or so, but after going through the process (which also takes very long) it reboots and tells me that restoring to the previous point failed.

In short, I'm confused and could really use your insight. What's causing this and how can I fix it? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed upon this. If you have any questions or need any further details, I'd be happy to answer and provide them.

Registry woes - what is causing it?

Leud — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 07:03:08 -0800

Windows XP Registry - What tools can be used to analyse ntuser.dat hives? Specifically to find out what in the hive is taking up space?

I've been tasked with trying to identify what is causing a large number of roaming users ntuser.dat files to gradually swell in size over the course of 4-8 weeks till their profiles reach the limit on a network I support. The limit is 10mb, ntuser.dat files tend to be an issue once they hit 3.5-5mb. (Majority of users sit around 2-3mb and don't swell)

GPO locks down users desktops heavily, no desktop icons/files and My Documents folders are redirected to a server location.

Current theories are:
One or more badly packaged apps filling the registry with junk. (There are a few identified which fill the application data folder with cached files.)

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU filling with junk (after a month or so of use 50%+ of subkeys seem to be in this area - yet clearing that doesn't reduce the ntuser.dat size by a significant amount)

There is no single software package which links all the users experiecing this problem. Number of subkeys doesn't seem to be a good way of analysing where the size in the user hive is being used up - I've not found a tool which will show the 'size' of key structures of the registry yet.

Not had any luck comparing snapshots to identify a cause either - any suggestions at this point would be welcome as this has wasted two days for me already.

Preserving a wider Quick Launch toolbar

chudmonkey — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:33:33 -0800

Is it possible to change the default minimum number of icons in the Windows XP Quick Launch toolbar? If the Quick Launch toolbar is docked at the right-hand side of the taskbar, to the immediate left of the system tray, then a minor annoyance can occur as more icons appear in the system tray:

If the Quick Launch toolbar has 3 icons or less in it, and is shrunk so that there's no extra space in the toolbar, then as the system tray fills up and extends towards the left, the Quick Launch toolbar will simply be pushed leftward, and will continue to show all 3 icons. However, if there are 4 or more icons in the Quick Launch toolbar and the system tray expands towards the left, the Quick Launch toolbar will shrink until there's only space for 3 icons, and only then will it start getting pushed leftwards.

So it would seem that Windows is configured to preserve 3 icons worth of space in the Quick Launch toolbar, and to allow the system tray to poach any extra space instead of just pushing the full (4+ icons full) toolbar over.

I assume there's a registry modification that would allow Windows to preserve a greater minimum number of icons in the Quick Launch toolbar, and I normally have no problem using Google to find registry modifications, but this issue is stumping me. Any thoughts?

How do I tell what program inserted a registry entry?

twine42 — Sun, 18 Jul 2004 07:05:52 -0800

PCFilter : Is there any way to tell what program inserted something into the registry?
I've been attacked by four seperate virii that sophos claims don't exist in the wild. One of them (netclnc.exe) keeps reappearing in my registry and the system32, and I want to know what's putting it there so I can kill it. Ideas?