RE: Windows registry recovery - going even more Off Topic

["Phil White" pdwhite@xxxxxxxx]

There another implication regarding the use of a system registry vs.
separate .ini files for configuration as used in older versions of Windows.

Simply, it provides better integration. Conceptually, the older versions of
Windows we more or less launching pads for applications. A lot of the system
resources these applications used to run were basically DOS calls. (Windows
did provide some overlay of common system parameters, printer, display, file
and font consolidation that stand-alone DOS applications did not have
previously; but mostly it was simply a GUI command layer on top of DOS.)

To diverge slightly, some applications that were initially ported to Windows
in the early days were actually DOS programs coupled with a setup that would
insert them into Windows to be run.

One particularly interesting one was Ventura Publisher, one of the first
desktop publishing packages for the PC. The first Ventura Publisher was a
stand-alone (DOS) version that ran in GEM. GEM was actually a more advanced
graphical interface than Windows was originally. (GEM and Ventura's concepts
can be traced back to the original Xerox crew that dreamed up the whole GUI
thing in the first place.) DTP programs like Ventura Publisher and
PageMaker literally revolutionized the publishing industry.

The first version of Ventura Publisher for Windows was actually run in GEM
opened in a window MS Windows. This allowed them to use the superior WSIWYG
graphical power of GEM in the Microsoft product that had taken over the GUI
market for PCs.

(Digressing further: This is really another story; if things had been
slightly different we might all be running GEM today or Digital Research
"CP/M86.2006" (or some such,) and Gary Kildall could well have been the
world's "Bill Gates.")

Back to the original subject: The integration mentioned above essentially
makes every modern Windows application into just another "Head" on a modern
Hydra, the Windows operating system. This is decidedly NOT a bad thing; each
application can readily use and share the combined resources the Windows
system provides. -- Although there are those who would disagree with this
statement, the Windows/.NET platform is NOT a closed system.

The integration of computer resources through Windows has also made the job
of application development and system integration much easier. Furthermore,
the continued evolution of the platform has the potential to benefit all the
applications that use it. -- The technical transition that has taken place
since the first versions of DOS/Windows is truly remarkable; a task only
made possible by economies of scale due to the vast numbers of Windows
users.

Back to where I started: The Windows registry is the organizational map of
the whole system; it defines what resources any application uses and what it
provides. Having a good, clean registry or vs. a clogged, corrupted one can
make a world of difference in how the whole system works. -- This is why it
is important to maintain your registry with a good registry tool. (And I
don't mean Norton utilities and the like which have been deliberately dumbed
down to be "easy to use" and cause as few support problems as possible...)

Finally it is a real shame that XyWrite was not one of the Windows
applications to survive as an ongoing product into this time. The original
Atex Editor/XyWrite concept already had the implicit capability to handle
extended character sets (now called Unicode) and could be easily adapted to
handle XML/XHTML and data objects in a way that the currently used word
processors are finally being forced to migrate to; and only with significant
difficulty in most cases.

	Phil White



Philip D. White,
Senior Information Architect
University of Houston, CASA Testing Center

Phone: (713) 743-4135
Fax: (713) 743-8630
Email: pdwhite@xxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Flash
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 4:58
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Windows registry recovery

Harry, et al,

> Or, my own method: just wait til it crashes and burns (about every
> 12-18 months), then do a clean re-install.
≪
Speaking of that. In re-installing XP, you have to format the disk then
reinstall all your apps right? Is this the penalty for having one large
C: drive with everything on it?≫

Yes. See now why it makes sense to keep the OS on one partition and put
the apps on another? It allows you to re-install the OS and keep the
apps (relatively) unaffected. But you must plan ahead and document what
apps you install. You must keep backups of the last clean and
functional registry, you must know (i.e., document) which apps were
registered (including service packs and updates), and you must keep the
backup reg files separate from the boot partition (which gets erased
when you re-install the OS). Further, you must ensure that the correct
backup registry is actually accessible to the re-installed OS, if
necessary before the network connections are re-established; in
practice, this means backing up the reg to the partition where the apps
are installed, and/or to CD-ROMs or USB stick. Reg edit has export and
import functions for this purpose. This is standard procedure for
corporate network disaster recovery policy, at least for servers and a
few mission critical stations, though no sys-ad would go to so much
trouble for every workstation.

Collecting the necessary apps-information in a single reg file is not
perfect, but it is an improvement over what Microsoft did before, which
was to locate the app-specific information inside each
app-installation-folder in an ini file. This meant that you had
hundreds of ini files strewn all over the hardisk. It was impossible to
backup and recover later.