HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet

[BAAV1]

My Vista Ultimate O.S. registry entries do not seem to be being managed automatically.

I have entries for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001 ... ControlSet070 and counting.

And the Select key is as follows:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Select]
"Current"=dword:00000001 (1)
"Default"=dword:00000001 (1)
"Failed"=dword:00000000 (0)
"LastKnownGood"=dword:00000046 (70)

I would have only expected to have found a maximum of 4 ControlSet keys registered by Windows Vista, what is causing so many entries to be recorded ?

Why doesn't Vista clean up the old ControlSet entries ?

How can I fix this ?

Thanks in anticipation

 

[niemiro]

Hello, and welcome to the Vista Forums!

Tricky question! You do have an awful lot. It is not exactly a bad thing, not that you ever said it was. Your Last Known Good Config is a high number, and that kind of suggests to me that Windows DOES think it is booting correctly, and evidently it is. [DEL]This can happen if you have a lot of changes.[/DEL] Badly described. Certain big registry changes will cause the old Control Set to be changed - sometimes. Big is really when certainly values and keys are modified. I guess that my first line of research would be to export the SYSTEM sub hive into a textural .reg file, just as you did for the Select key. We could then write a very short script to split it up into Control Sets (it would take me a shorter time to write the script than to do it manually) and then to compare them all using a log comparator. It would be interesting to see if there is one particular entry which is constantly changing.

It is difficult, and non-definitive, but you certainly know what you are doing. What do you think about this approach?

Thanks, and good luck!

Richard

 

[niemiro]

Edited the above. Please refresh the page!

 

[BAAV1]

Hi niemiro
That sounds like a good plan. I think I can write a script to compare the control sets as you have suggested, great idea.

I'll see what it throws up and I'll post back my findings.

Cheers

 

[niemiro]

Are you sure? I am happy to do it if you want, but you may of course do it yourself. As you can see, I don't really know what is going on, and this is just a test with a slight chance of success.

 

[BAAV1]

Many thanks for the offer, beyond the call of duty.

I think I have found the culprit, the majority of the ControlSetnnn entries just contain the "Services" sub-key. Only ControlSet001 and ControlSet070 contain all the main sub-keys (Control, Enum, Hardware Profiles & Services) which I believe would be expected since these two sets are current.

Under the Services sub-key, there is a value which is regularly changing from one set to the next, the key name is : buka_dump_prev and this registry key belongs to the "Trusteer Rapport" security software.

I have sent a problem report to Trusteer to ask if this is normal behaviour or maybe a bug with the software.

I'll update this thread when I have any more news.

 

[niemiro]

Excellent! Slickly done!

 

[Frutchy]

Hello,

I am having exactly the same problem as described by BAAV1 on a Vista 64-bit.
There are already 114 ControlSets in the registry and it keeps creating new ones.

All sets only contain the Services branche, as stated by BAAV1.

I would be very interested in getting one of your scripts to be able to compare branches, I am not familiar with scripting.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.