Thread: How do you manage files?

  1. #16
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bubba View Post
    The registry is also probably quite messy but every registry cleaner I've used has been 'too good' and ends up hosing it somehow.
    Yeah thats been the problem since day 1. Every application thinks its settings are so globally important as to warrant placing them in the registry rather than a local settings file. Very few things are of such importance. Font settings, primary language, physical location fo the users MyDocuments folder, but certainly not all teh crap that most applications put in there, and magically dont remove when they uninstall.

    I spent an hour and a half helping a friend manually clean his registry over a VNC connection last night, you woudln''t believe some fo the crap these applications put in there, and leave behind. ........ like the companies web address...

    My personal viewpoint is that unless its something that some other piece of software THAT ISN"T MADE BY YOUR COMPANY will need to know, it doesn't belong in the registry.
    Last edited by abachler; 01-09-2009 at 06:04 AM.

  2. #17
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    The registry was designed for settings, instead of putting them in local files.
    The applications are correct in placing it in the registry.
    Then there is the issue of whether or not to remove it. If you reinstall the app, if the settings are still there... if not, you have to reconfigure it all.

    Using the registry is not an excuse or bad thing. It's what they are supposed to do.
    Littering my documents and leaving files behind (unless they are settings, of course), is bad.
    Also leaving stuff in the registry which is not settings is also bad.

    But in the end, what does it matter if they leave stuff in the registry? So long as it does not affect the well being of the OS.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  3. #18
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elysia View Post
    But in the end, what does it matter if they leave stuff in the registry? So long as it does not affect the well being of the OS.
    Because ultimately it does. The registry isnt infinite in capacity, and when it gets full (of crap) it causes undefined behavior and system instability. Ive seen it cause problems such as -

    Resets user settings to the defaults
    Random OS restarts
    Driver corruption
    Total loss of the file system (TBH only once and it was a special case)

    Those first two are why I had to clean my friends registry.

  4. #19
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    Never experienced any of that AFAIK.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  5. #20
    Ugly C Lover audinue's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by abachler View Post
    Yeah thats been the problem since day 1. Every application thinks its settings are so globally important as to warrant placing them in the registry rather than a local settings file. Very few things are of such importance. Font settings, primary language, physical location fo the users MyDocuments folder, but certainly not all teh crap that most applications put in there, and magically dont remove when they uninstall.

    I spent an hour and a half helping a friend manually clean his registry over a VNC connection last night, you woudln''t believe some fo the crap these applications put in there, and leave behind. ........ like the companies web address...

    My personal viewpoint is that unless its something that some other piece of software THAT ISN"T MADE BY YOUR COMPANY will need to know, it doesn't belong in the registry.
    I think you'll need to use Altiris Virtualization Solution to keep your registry clean. You'll install and run 3rd parties applications inside AVS and then changes into registry and files will be forwarded into virtual system.
    Just GET it OFF out my mind!!

  6. #21
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elysia View Post
    Never experienced any of that AFAIK.
    Well, I've been around for a lot of years... and worked in a lot of different computer related fields. I've done everythign from build/install/repair to programming/engineering. Right now I'm designing an ASIC to improve neural network performance. I've owned every major version of x86 except a 286, and yes, that includes a 186 (which most people don't know existed).

  7. #22
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    You'd think the registry would grow!?!
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  8. #23
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    It does up to a point, the problem is that the registry is loaded into non-paged memory, so there has to be a limit on it or it woudl be possible to use all available system memory, which woudl prevent the OS from even starting up properly. Since the registry was never intended to be used as a general settings storage area, it was determined that limiting its size was the best tradeoff. Now by general settigns I mean the ones that don't effect other applications. These were always supposed to remain in local settings files, which is how they were handled for decades before the concept of a registry was introduced.

  9. #24
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Also if the registry contains tons of incorrect paths the system will continually search the paths even though they do not exist. Eventually the system figures it out that they don't exist and are not valid but it does not mark them as such. So the next time you load up the app it will search all those invalid paths again only to arrive at the same conclusion. Windows will do this every time it loads an app which can slow things to a crawl if you have a lot of invalid paths which most of us do.

    When you install and uninstall many programs leave invalid paths in the registry. I've also seen Microsoft products such as Word, Visual Studio, etc., leave paths to files that you may have created or worked on at one time but that no longer exist on the drive. It will attempt to load these into your recent projects or recent documents. One of the registry cleaners found about a thousand invalid paths in Visual Studio that were pointing to a project directory that had been moved and no longer existed. This caused Visual Studio to start extremely slow.

    The registry is just a bad all around if you ask me. Not because the concept is flawed but because the execution of the concept is extremely flawed. Windows has many problems with leaving stuff in cache folders that are to be cached into memory at bootup. It fails to maintain the contents of the cache folder to ensure all the crap it links to in there actually exists.

    To see just how flawed the entire registry system in Windows is install and uninstall the same app multiple times but choose different folders each time. Do a registry scan with one of the freebie cleaners out there and I guarantee you it will find a hundred incorrect paths because of what you did.
    Last edited by VirtualAce; 01-09-2009 at 05:51 PM.

  10. #25
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    I see. The whole registry needs a revamp then, I guess.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  11. #26
    Malum in se abachler's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Elysia View Post
    I see. The whole registry needs a revamp then, I guess.
    As Ive said, its not the registry that is the problem, but the way people abuse it.

  12. #27
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    And a problem needs a solution.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  13. #28
    Ugly C Lover audinue's Avatar
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    And a problem needs a solution.
    Backup and restore regularly or use expensive virtualization.
    Just GET it OFF out my mind!!

  14. #29
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    That is one solution. However, do you think casual users know anything of that?
    So if their computers crash due to registry problems, who is going to get the blame?
    Quote Originally Posted by Adak View Post
    io.h certainly IS included in some modern compilers. It is no longer part of the standard for C, but it is nevertheless, included in the very latest Pelles C versions.
    Quote Originally Posted by Salem View Post
    You mean it's included as a crutch to help ancient programmers limp along without them having to relearn too much.

    Outside of your DOS world, your header file is meaningless.

  15. #30
    Ugly C Lover audinue's Avatar
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    The administrator / the user itself who installed those applications that mess up the registry.
    Just GET it OFF out my mind!!

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