How to Strip and Reload .NET for Better Performance
Summary
Aaron Stebner of Microsoft put together an unofficial tool for removing .NET Framework installs. I stumbled across this while failing on a .NET 3.5 install: and it turns out that from my own experience, if you yank out the old .NET installs and load 3.5, the .NET applications appear to run faster. .NET 3.5 is an amalgamation of 2.0 and 3.0 components, and also appears to run 1.1 applications okay.
Downloads
Caveats
- I am not sure what effect this would have on Visual Studio. Considering where and how .NET is installed, I do not see it having a negative impact.
- x64-based systems stall on clearing the registry entries: you can use regedit to manually delete the .NETFramework and .NET CLR entries from HKLM/Software/Microsoft (the "View Log" button in the program is a good way to find out where it gets stuck). May want to run CCleaner before trying the tool again.
- Windows 2000 and older do not run 3.5.
- I haven't even tried this with Vista. Vista comes with 3.0 pre-loaded.
Procedure
- Close all programs.
- Run the .NET uninstaller. Reboot when asked.
- Log back in and run CCleaner: run the registry cleaner twice.
- Install .NET Framework 3.5.
- Repeat the CCleaner registry cleanup.
- Run Windows Update to verify things are up to date. You may find that .NET 3.0 SP1 and 1.1 want to be installed: those are optional, and the 3.0 SP1 I believe comes with 3.5 (hence the install failure it provokes).
- If you get prompted to load .NET 1.1 SP1, and it won't install, try this procedure.
References