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New Microsoft put a lot of faith in their registry.
Perhaps a bit too much. As you've just seen.

Wade.
"Don't give up!"
New As I've seen many times.
I tell my clients the Windows registry is one of the truly bad ideas of the 20th century - but they're stuck with it because Microsoft likes the control it gives them.

These days when something goes wrong it's over half an hour to reload Windows, two hours or more to download and install the updates and patches (up to 80 of them now) and another two to four hours to reconfigure and reinstall their applications. That's pretty damned expensive.

I pull the machine into the shop whenever possible so I don't have to just sit their waiting for hours at full rate.

[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
New MS admits its a bad idea
that's why they came up with Registration Free COM.

--Tony
New That deserves another !.
The registry came about in the first place to support OLE, which was the precursor to COM!

Wade.
"Don't give up!"
New Registration still required for singleton COM objects
New What exactly is a registry?
Seriously. I dont know.
New It's a file that holds lots of info that tells Windows...
what to do with various things.

[link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_registry|Wikipedia entry].

It can get corrupted fairly easily, and when it does Windows has lots of problems.

OS/2 (an old operating system that many of us loved) had something similar - OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI - that stored information that the Workplace Shell used to know various things about applications and the environment. It could have similar problems.

The idea of a database or a special file to hold information like this is a good one. But the system that reads and writes to that database must be smart enough to know what to do when the database gets corrupted. In Windows and OS/2's case, it was too easy to get in a situation that was pathological, and unless you - as a user - know what to do when that happens, you are often stuck with a reinstallation adventure.

HTH a bit.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Uggghh
I got about 2 lines into that link and zoned out. I tried to read it again. And again. My brain wont let me take it in. It keeps thinking "ugghhh" and shuts off.
Thanks for trying, though.
New It's just vocabulary.
:-)

But there's no need to clutter up your brain with trivia like that. It will only make less room for important things.

Cheers,
Scott.
New A little history.
UNIX and its descendent operating systems (including Linux, Mac OS X, and the BSD family) store their configuration files in plain text format - you can edit them in any text editor. Applications written for UNIXes tend to also use plain text files for their configuration files.

When I say "configuration files", I mean the files in which various pieces of the operating system store their setup information. For example, the file /etc/hosts holds information about the computer's network name:
##\n# Host Database\n#\n# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface\n# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.\n##\n127.0.0.1       localhost\n255.255.255.255 broadcasthost\n::1             localhost \n10.200.1.50     guildenstern.dyndns.org

Lines beginning with # are comments. Don't worry about the actual content; the point here is that the information is stored in a format that is easy to read and edit, and in a single small file. So while the /etc directory on my OS X computer is full of these files, and it's a bit intimidating, one advantage is that if an application goes berzerk and scribbles all over its configuration file, it won't cause any collateral damage.

Windows takes a completely different approach. Configuration data is stored in a binary (i.e. you can't edit with anything other than a special tool - regedit.exe - and it's not readable by humans in any meaningful sense of the word) format in a large database. There's precious little structure to it and it's very big. This badly-organised, hard-to-edit and hard-to-read mess of data is called the Windows Registry.

If a Windows program (or Windows itself) goes bananas and pukes in the Registry, the scope for wide-ranging damage is enormous. Windows attempts to mitigate the risk of this by operating a system of backups and the System Restore function, but it is still very possible for a Windows computer to have its registry damaged beyond repair, at which point the arduous task of reinstalling Windows (and then all the patches and applications, which is the part that takes the time) becomes unavoidable.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
[link|http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?pwhysall|A better terminal emulator]
[image|http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h262/pwhysall/Misc/saveus.png|0|Darwinia||]
New Apple took a slightly different approach

Plain text config files are kept for backward compatibility, but where possible OS X uses *.plist files to store configuration information. These are still plain text for the most part, but use XML.

I say 'for the most part' since they started out as text files, some of them are now binary, a move which I view with some paranoia.

Tom Sinclair

"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
New Did you guys never work helpdesk?
Laura, here it is in English.

You know how when you go into Microsoft Word you can set it to back up what you're working on every ten minutes, just in case it crashes? (You do know that, right?) And you can set it to correct common typos as you go, or instead wait until you run a spellcheck.

And in Outlook, you can set it to do the typo thing, or to automatically spellcheck before you send anything.

The way it used to work was that each program saved these settings to its own place. So wherever Word was installed, there would be a file that had all those settings. Usually called 'config.ini' or 'word.ini' or something like that. ('ini' for "initialization") You could read the file in Notepad, if you wanted to, and see what your settings were. You could even change the settings directly in that file, if you were a geek (or an idiot). And if you completely broke the Word config file, the only thing that was broken was Word. And you could usually fix it by just deleting the file and everything would go back to the default settings.

Well, someone had the bright idea to put all of these settings into a big database. That way Outlook would know that when you're in Word you like to spellcheck as you go. He probably had a Powerpoint presentation with a contrived example of why Outlook would ever need to know this.

The first problem with this idea is that, even when everything is going right, you can't just read the file. Second is that the Word settings are all mixed up with the Outlook settings, and there's really no way to know for sure which program wrote which setting.

The bigger problem, though, is what happens when it breaks. Everything breaks. It's a single file that nothing on your computer (or almost nothing) will work if it's messed up, and everything on your computer needs to be able to modify it. It's like putting all the electricity in your house onto one line, then don't put a fuse or breaker on it.

Yes, Windows is that stupid. And it has been since '95. It's why Andrew can afford to buy 10 every fish sold in L.A.
===

Kip Hawley is still an idiot.

===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New try it in ordinary
Laura,
picture a Physicians Desk Reference, except that the Microsoft one is written in pig latin and such bad pig latin that only the official microsoft PDR translator can be used to translate it. That is what the Registry represents. A PDR for computers.
thanx,
bill
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
New I got it before "ordinary"
And I find it too boring to spend anymore time thinking about it.
New That's just verbose, not clear.
It's also got a hint of patronising in it, too.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
[link|http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?pwhysall|A better terminal emulator]
[link|http://darwinia.co.uk/|[image|http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h262/pwhysall/Misc/saveus.png|0|Darwinia||]]
New I'll ask again, did you ever work helpdesk?
People who don't already know (or think they know) what the registry is would glaze over as soon as you said "plain text file".
===

Kip Hawley is still an idiot.

===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New Yes I did.
And no, they won't.

But this is just argument by assertion, so I'll leave it there.



Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
[link|http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?pwhysall|A better terminal emulator]
[link|http://darwinia.co.uk/|[image|http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h262/pwhysall/Misc/saveus.png|0|Darwinia||]]
     Interesting XP problem - (Andrew Grygus) - (23)
         That's a weird one. - (Another Scott)
         Sounds like something awry in the partition table. - (static)
         sounds like the first block might have problems - (boxley)
         Could it be a Trojan/Virus in... - (folkert) - (1)
             seen that years ago in scsi adapter bios - (boxley)
         Yes, Interesting - (Andrew Grygus) - (17)
             Microsoft put a lot of faith in their registry. - (static) - (16)
                 As I've seen many times. - (Andrew Grygus) - (3)
                     MS admits its a bad idea - (tonytib) - (2)
                         That deserves another !. - (static) - (1)
                             Registration still required for singleton COM objects -NT - (tonytib)
                 What exactly is a registry? - (bionerd) - (11)
                     It's a file that holds lots of info that tells Windows... - (Another Scott) - (2)
                         Uggghh - (bionerd) - (1)
                             It's just vocabulary. - (Another Scott)
                     A little history. - (pwhysall) - (1)
                         Apple took a slightly different approach - (tjsinclair)
                     Did you guys never work helpdesk? - (drewk) - (5)
                         try it in ordinary - (boxley) - (1)
                             I got it before "ordinary" - (bionerd)
                         That's just verbose, not clear. - (pwhysall) - (2)
                             I'll ask again, did you ever work helpdesk? - (drewk) - (1)
                                 Yes I did. - (pwhysall)

This is untested and you're my guinea pig.
114 ms