Utilities Suggestions : Windows DEFAULT Registry Hive Size

1. dureg.exe

2. chkreg.exe

 

Firstly use dureg.exe to find the registry hive sizes

 

Example

 

Run from a command prompt with elevated rights

 

c:\tools>dureg /a

Size of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT   :   26739622
Size of HKEY_USERS          :  108017691
Size of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE  :   62735813

    Total Registry data size:    197493126

 

Then to check Default Registry Hive Size run from command prompt

 

C:\tools>dureg /u ".Default"
Size of HKEY_USERS\.Default: 45919575

 

To compact the Default Registry Hive is a little bit more tricky.

Follow these steps:

 

1. Reboot your server into recovery mode with the installation disk.

2. Choose your Windows installation normally you just have to enter 1 and press enter

3. Type in the Local Administrator password for your server

4. cd to \windows\system32\config

5. now it should show c:\windows\system32\config>

6. run copy command like

Example

c:\windows\system32\config>copy default c:\tools

7. cd to c:\tools

8. run the second command chkreg from c:\tools example

C:\tools>chkreg /F "C:\tools\default" /C

Number of Bins in hive: 12770
Total Hive space usage: 4.90%

SUMMARY:
          Cells,           Size,     Category
           4078,         448728,     Keys
           8851,         408192,     Values
           1424,          46808,     Key Index
           2624,          48248,     Value Index
             13,           3320,     Security
           3284,        6260352,     Data
          23018,      182946208,     Free
          43292,      190161856,     Total Hive

           2024 compacted  keys (all related cells in the same view)

 

9. Now you will have a file in c:\tools> called default.BAK and you will notice this is the compacted version of the default registry hive.

10. Now you can run copy command example:

 

c:\tools>copy default.BAK c:\windows\system32\config

 

10. Now you have to rename your default registry file example:

 

cd to c:\windows\system32\config

 

run rename command example

 

10.1 c:\windows\system32\config>ren default default.bkp

10.2 c:\windows\system32\config>ren default.BAK default

 

Now you have compacted your default registry hive, now you must remove installation disk and reboot.