Everything about Registry

This article explains how to use the Windows Registry. The Registry is the central storehouse for all settings for the Windows operating systems. This includes hardware configuration, file associations, and control panel settings. Many other programs will also store settings in the registry.

The registry is made up of "Keys". Each key is like the branch of a tree. Each key has one parent key, and zero or more child keys. Each key can contain zero or more "Values", each of which contains a single piece of data.

To make navigating the registry a bit easier, you can think of the registry's construction like your hard drives.

Hard drive <-> Registry
Folders <-> Keys
Files <-> Values

The registry contains 6 main keys:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT ---- Contains information on file types, including which programs are used to open a particular file type.
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER ---- Contains user-specific settings that are built from information in the HKEY_USERS key during the logon process.
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ---- Contains computer specific information including installed hardware and software. This is the one users tend to spend the most time in.
• HKEY_USERS ---- Contains information (generic and user-specific) about all the users who log on to the computer. The generic settings are available to all users who log on to the computer. The information is made up of default settings for programs, desktop configurations, and so on. This key contains subkeys for each user that logs on to the computer.
• HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG ---- Contains information about the computer's hardware configuration .
• HKEY_DYN_DATA ---- Contains real-time performance statistics on the computer's hardware.

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