How Can the Registry Slow Down a Computer?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
turkey3_scratch

turkey3_scratch

Expert
Ambassador
Jul 15, 2014
22,630
8
60,960
It makes no sense to me because the registry is permanately-stored data, so I don't see how a large overfilled registry could possibly slow down a computer. A lot of files does not slow down a computer so why a large registry?
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
B

boosted1g

Titan
Jun 12, 2013
14,846
8
74,965
It would take significantly longer to search through thousands of text files and open them, vs using a database.

You could organize them into folders but it would not be nearly as simple as trees in a database.

Those 50000 text files would take up a significant more amount of space and would have to load all of them into system memory or have even slower performance.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Major_Trouble

Major_Trouble

Distinguished
Jun 25, 2007
713
11
19,165
Over time you may install / uninstall / update programs, add new hardware etc. All these things will cause changes to the registry. Some things get left behind which adds to the computers workload to sort through / load and some can cause instability.

If you had to sort through lots of conflicting information as opposed to just the info you needed you would slow down as well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
turkey3_scratch

turkey3_scratch

Expert
Ambassador
Jul 15, 2014
22,630
8
60,960
@boosted1g: The thing is, using something such as a txt file renamed to perhaps .set for settings, no searching would be needed because programs themselves would store data on which file to open. Take MS Word for example, when I click msword.exe to run the file, it has to search the registry for entries that it specifies, particularly settings. Rather than searching for entires, would it not be easier for msword.exe to store data on the directory of settings and then access the .set file from that directory without even needing to search for the settings itself through a whole bunch of files?

Take a website for example (for you coders). If you use .txt files in the root directory of your public_html folder that store data on each user, such as let's say the user's bio, the server does not need to search through all the txt files before inding the correct user's bio and sending it to the client, it simply accesses it directly. That's what I'm getting at. I think if there is one thing Microsoft should look into changes with in Windows 10 it would be the registry. I think settings for a program should be stored in the root directoory of the program's files rather than in the registry, such as how Linux works.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
171,437
17,905
184,590


As noted earlier, that is what .ini files used to do with earlier version of Windows. Each application had one or more.
They did away with that, in favor of a centralized Registry.

Given that a particular application or suite (Office) may have thousands of entries, a text file (.ini) may not be faster.
Also, the Registry provides a centralized place for shared resources. Fonts, for instance.

Example:
What fonts are installed? Well....lets read this applications .ini file to tell us where the fonts live, and then go read that location to see what actually exists.
Faster? Probably not.

Manipulating an application:
Each time you resize a window, those settings are written to the Reg. Next time you open that application, it knows where it was last time.
Writing/saving that info to a text file may well be slower.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom