HUGE ntuser.dat - please help.

[mc]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.configuration_manage (More info?)

(sorry if double posted, can't seem to get the news server to behave)

Hi everyone,

I've been running into bootup time problems and I've gone in and checked
what the problem might be. To my amazement, my user's registry hive
ntuser.dat is a whopping 140MB !!

I've already gone in and fixed any errors there might have been and
compressed/defragged (tried 2 different tools for that) but the size
remains about the same. I have no idea where this bloat comes from but
it causes a serious logon delay (I'm not talking just a few seconds
here) which is really inconvenient.

Does anyone know how to track what takes so much space in the registry
file? I've tried exporting the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch but it creates a
much smaller file so whatever it is isn't in the normally exported keys...

Unfortunately, the tools ERUNT and NTREGPT don't seem to work either,
they give errors on trying to access the hives.

Any suggestions/help appreciated! Thanks

 

[pisboi]

You can try to open regedit, export HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and check it's filesize. Then move down the tree and exort for example Software. Check the filesize now. If it's about the same, your problem is under the Software-key.

Then either open the exportet reg files in notepad and see if you can find reoccuring instances of text, or move down the tree under Software to continue to export different keys. Eventually you will find the "big" one, and probably be able to identify the problem.