Strange Registry Growth XP SP3

Hi there,
Approx. 2 weeks ago I installed a 2nd internal HD as a backup unit. After formatting I used XXClone to copy my C:-drive to the new disk (D and make it bootable. So far so good. After today´s "housecleaning" with Registry Mechanic I wanted to see whether the registry needed to be compacted. After the analysis I was shocked to see that the registry (last known size approx. 56 MB) had grown to 134 MB!!! So I ran regedit and found that HKLM and HKU showed new sub-keys titled "PE_D_*" which actually repeated the sub-keys Hardware/SAM/Security/Software/System in HKLM and had created new sub-keys in HKU like S-1-5-19 and S-1-5-21-1085....-1005/....-1006/....-450/....-451.
Does anyone out there has a clue as to what has happened with my registry? Did this happen when I cloned the C:-drive? Or is this a normal behaviour when defragmenting the registry?

Thx for any hint.

 

If you can boot the disk that has the "large" registry, I would suggest using Glarysoft Registry repair. Allow it to scan the registry then you can review its results to see what those subkeys are all about and optionally allow it to fix that registry.
Freeware.
http://www.glarysoft.com/

 

Thanks a lot to both of you, Arie and Jonas.
I´m inclined to believe that this happened when defragmenting the registry. After defragmenting (on reboot) the registry was back to normal size, i.e. the additional subkeys had disappeared. Since everything is running smoothly I´m satisfied with this conclusion. Certainly I will observe the registry size again when defragmenting it next time.