Purge old NTUser.dat{*}.TMContainer*.regtrans-ms" and ditto.TM.blf

CCleaner for Windows CCleaner Windows Suggestions
1

Bloat without Benefit irritates me.

During the last 8 months Windows 7 has grown by 40 MBytes in 120 monstrous files such as

NTUSER.DAT{016888bd-6c6f-11de-8d1d-001e0bcde3ec}.TMContainer00000000000000000001.regtrans-ms

NTUSER.DAT{016888bd-6c6f-11de-8d1d-001e0bcde3ec}.TM.blf

That is Bloat. :(

Where is the Benefit :)

I have just been looking for answers and find :-

Remove them to fix problems installing updates / hotfixes etc, as per

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948252

and at

http://forums.techar...elp/1163773.htm

Those files are created dynamically to prevent the registry becomming

corrupt - basically whenever you make a setting it will be written to files

such as that instead before being written to the real file - that way if

something goes wrong there is a recovery option.

If the registry does become corrupt and these files provide a recover option,

HOW AND WHEN is recovery performed ?

Would Registry Corruption cause a Boot Failure that offers the choices to try again or to try "Last Good ..."

and would these recovery option files be used at this time ?

Does a successful boot mean that these old files will never be needed in the future ?

If today it is discovered that 200 days ago the registry was corrupted,

would 200 day old *.regtrans-ms and *.TM.blf files be of any use ?

Would they restore the registry keys of an application that has since been uninstalled ?

I would appreciate feedback on this - hopefully before I give up waiting and dig a big hole :rolleyes:

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate + SP1.

Regards

Alan

2

Great questions! Couldn't put it better. Pity there are no answers. Did you find any answers anywhere else, Alan_B?

3

No answers yet, but working on it.

4

http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-windows-vista-file-management/353233-regtrans-ms-blf-files.html

NTUSER.DAT file is an important file that is actually the user's registry.

With that in mind, that file will be called NTUSER.DAT and not

NTUSER.DAT{0ad09973-e8c7-11db-b39d-0019d1481925}.TM.blf so it's not a huge

problem if they're not around.

Those files are created dynamically to prevent the registry becomming

corrupt - basically whenever you make a setting it will be written to files

such as that instead before being written to the real file - that way if

something goes wrong there is a recovery option.

You shouldn't cause any problems by removing those files (obviously don't

remove NTUSER.DAT) but to be honest you might as well leave them around.

It's not a lot of space and at the end of the day, they're going to keep

getting recreated anyway.

To me, this means they're kept around for immediate recovery, like a CTRL + Z (undo) but not for long term recovery (system restore)

5

To me, this means they're kept around for immediate recovery, like a CTRL + Z (undo) but not for long term recovery (system restore)

I agree, I just have a problem with the time-scale involved in "immediate recovery".

I am unsettled by the word "instead" in the phrase

basically whenever you make a setting it will be written to files

such as that instead before being written to the real file

There is the implication that whatever requires a new "setting" has a direct effect that INSTEAD of writing to the registry where it belongs,

it will instead write it to these special files,

and it is to be hoped that the information will eventually get written by some undefined Windows magic to the registry,

and if that corrupts the registry this 1 MB blob of setting data will un-corrupt the 100+MB registry.

I understood the actual registry hives are read into memory on start-up,

and that registry changes happen in memory and these hives are updated during an orderly shutdown.

I can accept that a system crash would prevent an orderly shutdown update,

and maybe on a reboot the system could scavenge the intended settings from these files,

in which case if I run CCleaner before shutdown and it is set to erase these files,

they will NOT be available for recovery upon reboot.

If that word "instead" should mean that the setting is only placed in the file,

with the expectation that it will be read back and merged into the registry at shut-down/start-up,

then if I use CCleaner to zap these files the settings might never make it into the registry hives.

The old cartographers would draw a map showing what they knew,

and fill in the blanks with "Dragons be here".

That was good - no sailors got eaten by dragons :rolleyes:

Windows is a more dangerous world, and what I do not know WILL hurt me :wacko:

6

Maybe they didn't know what was there because every time they tried to find out, they'd be harassed by dragons!