My question was essentially asking about whether the registry would get overfull and, if so, would there would be any reason (in a real life network) to clear out the registry on client machines. I know that a new "virgin" image of the OS can be loaded on the clients and suspect that this might be an annual job for the IT staff during the summer holiday.
Would it get overfull? I don't know. Never heard of such nor have I heard of this being expressed as a concern in numerous Windows or Windows performance books/magazines/articles that I've read.
In a real world scenario it's probably more efficient to reimage machines then to go in and fiddle with the bits and pieces of the OS that make it operate optimally (i.e: defragging, performing disk cleanup, etc). All lab computers in my college get reimaged at night by an automated process. All library and "open" machines are already logged on with a generic student login so there's essentially only two or so profiles on the computer (a software "shell" that requires the students to input their student ID is what controls access to the actual, customized desktop).
