The registry is a location of any PC’s memory which mainly stores settings and preferences of applications. It also stores vital computer information which is required for the computer to function properly. It can be found by opening Start > Type “regedit”.
At a glance for the first time you’ll probably find it way to complicated and just exit the window…but stop right there! Looking closely you’ll notice it’s just a series of directories and sub directories you wouldn’t have seen in your system drive before. The directories are known as “keys”. The entries what you find in the keys are known as values, and what is stored in the values are known as data.
On the left side you’ll notice the main directories:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT – stores information like file type associations of the system
HKEY_CURRENT_USER – stores information about the current user logged on to the system. Stores settings that will affect only the user logged on currently.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE – stores information about all users of the system. Stores settings that affect all users of the system.
HKEY_USERS – as the name suggests, stores information regarding the users of the system
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG – stores data regarding the current system configuration
WARNING! – make sure you know what you are doing before you modify the registry, some changes could result in your PC malfunctioning and your applications failing to initialize.
If you know your way round the registry you can perform various changes to enhance and optimize your system.
It’s fine to play around with the registry as long as you back it up first.
How do you backup the registry?
To backup the registry Open File > Export, select the export range to “All” and save the backup.
How do you restore the backup?
In case you screw up trying to modify the registry Open File > Import, go to the location where the backup was saved and restore the backup.
While these modifications are useful, most common viruses today make use of registry modifications to damage your system. You may have come across viruses that disable your task manager, display properties, folder options, etc…these are all modifications viruses have made to the registry to disable these features.
updated – December 11th ’08
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