I'm just a bit curious.
If I have this right, alot of the PortableApps launchers when initiated, inserts things (settings and such) to the registry. Then when you close the program in question it then deletes those changes that it had made.
Doesn't this cause registry fragmentation? And since it's doing it every time these programs start up and close out, isn't it happening an awful lot? I thought registry fragmentation was bad, and, incidentally would be an undesirable change to the host system which the programs in question had been run on.
Is this not the case?
Isn't it sort of like installing and uninstalling the programs over and over again?
Shouldn't this lead to eventual system instability?
Don't get me wrong, I love PortableApps, and do use them all the time. In fact I have a separate partition set up on my hard drive where I keep my personal copy of PortableApps for my own computer. I found that putting them on the system drive of windows had unfortunate side effects, like any .exe file seems to be monitored by the System restore. I had to do a system restore to a time before I'd upgraded some of my PortableApps, and it restored all of the .exe's to previous versions, at the time making them incompatible with the current other files those programs used. This also makes it so that, if for whatever reason I may need to reinstall windows, I can do so without having to go back and install tons of programs all over again. I can tell you that's a big time saver.
Anyhow I just thought making lots additions, then deletions from the registry hives caused registry fragmentation, which as I understand it can cause a system to slow down, and over the long haul lose stability. I was just wondering if this was the case or not with these programs.
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Whether it works that way or not (it will to a certain degree, but not as much as you image, I don't think), we can't avoid it; various applications store their data in the registry, and so we need to load their data into the registry. It's not really like installing and uninstalling the programs, as there's lots that isn't copied; file assiciations, CLSID stuff, uninstall information, and often quite a lot more. And it definitely won't lead to system instability. At the end it's just like it was before as far as the program you ran is concerned.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
You can defragment your registry periodically if you feel that this is an issue. GlaryUtilitiesPortable contains a registry defragger. Like you, I use portable apps on a fixed drive on my home computer, and like any good user should I run periodic maintenance on that computer, including registry defragmentation. Granted I only do registry defragmentation once every few months because I don't really notice any major performance/stability issues caused by fragmentation.
At least if you are using XP upwards (not about 2000). AFAIK every Windows since XP doesn't load the whole registry to RAM, but only those parts which are needed and so a registry defrag will result in (almost) no change.
And as Chris said, writing in the registry appears more than you might imagine as MANY programs save their settings, recent file list and so on there.
System instability isn't caused by heavily writing to the registry but by having wrong/old registry entries.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
So why bother to create a tool to do it? Gimmick? Misguided good intentions?
You say don't defrag, but would there be any harm from doing so? I don't see why it should be a problem if no harm is done. I'm certainly not claiming it will make your Pentium 233Mhz run like an 800Mhz, in truth I've never noticed any great performance benefits but I'm of the mindset of if it doesn't do any harm, why not?
I have heard of memory (RAM) defraggers being a waste of time but that's a different story.