A question was asked in another thread about why registry cleaners were especially bad with Windows 10.
Here’s a few reasons based on my own observations using the Registry Editor and TechNet/Sysinternal‘s Process Monitor over many years:
If you look at Windows 10 registry (and file) read/writes using Process Monitor you’ll see almost continuous data events.
IMO previous versions of Windows were just a tad more restrained about registry activity and tended to react specifically to user actions rather than just read/write continously. (Although file read/writes would often wait for user idle times before flushing to disk.)
For example, data changes within the Windows 7 registry tended to be *either* system-wide (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) *or* per user (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) but not usually both. Windows 8 changed that and these days that hive separation seems to have disappeared completely. Process Monitor shows that a change which theoretically should only affect the current user now also generates copious system-wide activity… and vice versa.
Then there’s all the new stuff. Back in Win 7 days you could reasonably expect to find your own user settings stored somewhere in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CurrentVersion and it was fairly simple. Where once a simple change might have resulted in a binary flip from 0 to 1 (or vice versa) to reflect a simple change state from OFF to ON (or back again), the registry now records *much* more (and the entries and data are increasingly more obfuscated [to deter tinkerers?]).
The amount of information recorded in the registry has expanded exponentially, some of it to do with cloud-based content and default apps running in the background, all recorded faithfully in the registry (see CloudStore, ContentDeliveryManager and BackgroundAccessApplications under HKEY_CURRENT_USER as examples). There’s just bucketloads of new categories in both system and user hives.
Then there’s changes made to ‘permissions management’ which all takes time to process and record (especially as more ‘Security’ sub-keys get added [specifically to deter tinkerers]).
It all adds up to… there just isn’t a time when the registry is sat there quietly twiddling its thumbs thinking “I’m bored”. 🙂
(A side effect is that it has become progressively more difficult [for tinkerers] to determine how changes, say within the ‘Settings’ app, are reflected in the registry with so much going on every single second.)
Where it comes to registry cleaners, another side effect is that it becomes increasing more difficult to shovel potentially masses of registry deletes (by CCleaner or any other registry cleaner) without risk, especially when ‘permissions management’ varies between Win 7, Win 8 and now Win 10.
IMO it’s no longer worth the risk that a tiny timing mis-event won’t ‘write’ and/or ‘delete’ when and where it shouldn’t.
