Scanreg

While I was searching the database for info on Weatherbug, which evolved into a giant spyware hassle and had to be dumped, I ran across a thread discussing scanreg. Is there such a thing on XP Pro? Does it exist, but have another name? Does anyone have a third party software to clean the registry that they particularly like? Thanks for your thoughts.

Johanna

 

Scanreg is called Chkdsk in Windows 2000 and XP. As for cleaning the registry I like JV16 PowerTools.

 

Hello Johanna,

Hope you mean scandisk. Scanreg I don't know about.

Read thru this thread on where chkdsk is accessed and and what it does http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18944

I second Ranger Bob on jvPT.

Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar - Nope. She meant scanreg. Was added with Win98 although it will run (at least the command line version will) on Win95.

I always used the command line version and would run twice.
Scanreg /fix to repair any errors followed by Scanreg /opt which would mostly remove empty holes in the registry since 98 leaves a blank space within the file after you delete entries. Not obvious from regedit but there none the less. And can seriously decrease performance.

But yes, chdkdsk /f or chkdsk /r in XP will do the registry part along with disk checking so basically you have scanreg & scandisk combined in a single utility.

 

Newt,

Is there a trick to running "chkdsk /f" from within the GUI? Seems like everytime I try this, I get a message about XP having to schedule this for the next reboot (or something to that effect).

Thanks!

Russ

 

That is normal Russ it can't do it on a drive with open files.

Mike

 

Yup. Normal on the system drive and maybe on others if they are doing something OS-ish like housing the pagefile (or any part of it).

Some of the things chkdsk needs to do just can't happen unless it has total control of the drive. It grabs that control of the system drive before the OS has a chance to load and take control.

 

OK. I have done all of the above. When I run chkdsk /f it finds one problem, tells me to schedule at startup. I do this and it scans and says no problems found. So now I don't know if there is a problem or not. Even tried in safe mode, with the same result. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Forgot to mention, running XPHome SP1 installed as an upgrade over ME. Not a clean install, even tho I regret that now.

 

Hello canuk,

What you're trying to do is get around chkdsk's mechanism and it gives you a "canned" response. As Mike pointed out to you, unlike on 9X, XP will only defrag in safe mode.

I suspect this was added to XP because so many users of 9X insisted on trying to defrag in normal mode with all the "restarting" nonsense.

So, when you want to defrag, do what it says. Scdedule it and re-boot.


Regards - Charles

 

Hi Charles, thanks for your response. I have scheduled and rebooted and it tells me no errors found. However, if I run chkdsk /f again it tells me there is. So that is where my confusion lies. Is there one problem or not?

Thanks

 

Hi Ed,

"Is there one problem or not? "

Sorry for the un-clarity. IMO no.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks Charles, appreciate your help