I always hear the Computer Guys on WAMU-88.5 FM saying that – if you really, really, know what you’re doing – you can use regedit to edit your registry and fix software problems.
This looks like it would be a useful skill to know. WHat is the registry and what do you accomplish by editing it? Can anyone give some examples? I know it goes without saying that if you bungle the regedit you could seriously screw up your OS.
The registry is only a windows thing. It is very possible to screw your system up by messing with it, but looking through it can be informative.
Basically it’s a bunch of key-value pairs arranged in a heirarchical structure. It’s used to store all sorts of information like user names, program registration information, path names, etc.
Looking through your registry (without editing) won’t screw anything up, so I suggest you just run regedit (from the ‘run’ selection on the start menu) and just look through it.
You can quite often find information for programs that you have uninstalled. If you’ve got a lot of this sort of thing in there, cleaning up your registry might yield some performance improvements.
Previous versions of Windows stored program setting in various INI files. With the Advent of Windows 9x, NT 4 and 2000, configuration information is stored in a collection of system files known as The Registry. Depending on what you are changing it is possible that a mistake will cause your system to stop functioning. Windows Magazine http://www.winmag.com has a great article on editing your registry
The Registry is a way for Windows to categories and store all the technical information given to a specific program/extension. What the guys on the radio were talking about… for example… is tweaking the Regedit for Napster. People who were banned from Napster could very easily change some of the information in the registry in order to become a member again. Other common examples of RegEdit tweaking consists of removing some of the desktop right-click options (Which some programs annoying add upon installation) and other preferences to change some annoying windows features. If you want some useful examples goto - http://www.annoyances.org - This site basically has it all.
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Click start, click run, type in: regedit
Have a blast.
BTW, you might use another program to do it, free ones are propbably at download.com [search for ‘registry’].
And while you’re in Regedit, do an export before playing around. If you mess something up and can still get back to Desktop, you can import your last working version.
If you mess something up so that Windows won’t start, you can start up at dos prompt and do a scandisk /restore. This will allow you to startup from a previously working copy.
As handy said, have a blast!
Geez, you make it sound like RegEdit is a baby’s toy. Brach is right about editing. The best way to make sure you don’t delete something important is to export a registy [Archieve/export registry file]. Some registry entries are vital to a programs performance, and if you delete one of those entries you can double-click the exported registry and it will import it back to the same place. As said though, if you don’t know what a registry is, it is probably best that you don’t play with it. There are many books that will tell you how to “Have a blast” with the registry and there are many programs that perform common registry task. I’d look into these alternatives before doing anything stupid.
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Listen to Humble Ice: mucking around in regedit can potentially make you and your computer very unhappy. But explore it. you can find some interesting things there that may be helpful to know if things go wrong in the future.
So make sure you export the entire registry (the other option exports only portions of it). It’s a good idea to export a copy regardless of whether you tinker around in there or not. Add new software/hardware? Export a new version of your registry.
And welcome, Humble. You have some nice, surreal pics in your website gallery.
With great care and precaution. Back up the registry files before you scramble the eggs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
It’s best to voyage into the registry with a plan as to what you want to tinker with. Then you can do a search for various words relating to this purpose. Many registry keys are labeled nicely enough that you can guess what they do. Until you have lots of experience and are feeling lucky I wouldn’t mess with any of the keys that are long numerical strings. They are often Windows stuff that can seriously break stuff.
If you want to change stuff for certain programs I’d be willing to help you fool around with it. Just email me.