RegMaid UtilityCleaning Your Registry

RegMaid Utility—Cleaning Your Registry

RegMaid is a utility developed by Microsoft and intended to help you track down and cleanup problematic OLE entries in the Registry database. RegMaid is quite easy to use, and at the same time, it provides the user with as much information on the problem registry entries as possible (Fig. 13.10). This information can then be used to make decisions about the entries you want to delete and which you want to repair.

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Fig. 13.10: The RegMaid utility main window

Information on the OLE components is stored in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT registry key, where you typically find subsections such as CLSID, TypeLib, xInterface, and ProgId.

The RegMaid utility considers CLSID entries problematic if they contain a handler or server entry for a file that can't be found. There are several ways in which this situation may occur. A few of the most common include: deleting the file, moving the file or a broken network path.

ProgId entries will be considered broken when the associated CLSID cannot be found in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID. As a result, deleting CLSID entries will cause related ProgId entries to be listed.

TypeLib entries are considered broken when the associated file cannot be found.

Interface entries are considered broken when the TypeLib entry cannot be matched to one in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib. Consequently, deleting TypeLib entries will allow RegMaid to identify the associated problem.

RegMaid provides information about the entries believed to be problematic in a form of the report, where the user can make multiple row selections. Once selections have been made, the user can then delete them from the registry. Although RegMaid does not currently have an Archive or Restore capabilities, it does provide a printed report mechanism for each of the four views.

Windows 9x and Windows NT officially support this utility, but I also tested it on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It does indeed work, and is rather useful.

This freeware utility is essential for advanced users, and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center (http://www.microsoft.com).



Windows XP Registry
Linux Enterprise Cluster: Build a Highly Available Cluster with Commodity Hardware and Free Software
ISBN: N/A
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2000
Pages: 144
Authors: Karl Kopper

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