The Windows Registry is a database where Windows and many programs store their configuration settings. You can edit the registry yourself to enable hidden features and tweak specific options. These tweaks are often called “registry hacks.”
What is the Windows Registry, and How Does It Work?
The Windows registry is a collection of several databases. There are system-wide registry settings that apply to all users, and each Windows user account also has its own user-specific settings.
On Windows 10 and Windows 7, the system-wide registry settings are stored in files under C:\Windows\System32\Config\
, while each Windows user account has its own NTUSER.dat file containing its user-specific keys in its C:\Windows\Users\Name
directory. You can’t edit these files directly.
But it doesn’t matter where these files are stored, because you’ll never need to touch them. When you sign in to Windows, it loads the settings from these files into memory. When you launch a program, it can check the registry stored in memory to find its configuration settings. When you change a program’s settings, it can change the settings in the registry. When you sign out of your PC and shut down, it saves the state of the registry to the disk.
The registry contains folder-like “keys” and “values” inside those keys that can contain numbers, text, or other data. The registry is made up of multiple groups of keys and values like HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. These groups are called “hives” because of one of the original developers of Windows NT hated bees. Yes, seriously.
Microsoft introduced the registry back in Windows 3.1, but it was initially used only for certain types of software. In the Windows 3.1 era, Windows applications frequently stored settings in .INI configuration files that were scattered across the OS. The registry can now be used by all programs, and it helps bring together the settings that would otherwise be scattered in many different locations across the disk.
Not all programs store all their settings in the Windows registry. Each program developer can decide to use the registry for every setting, just a few settings, or no settings. Some programs store all (or just some) of their settings in configuration files—for example, under your Application Data folder. But Windows itself makes extensive use of the registry.
Why You Might Want to Edit the Registry
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from How-To Geek https://www.howtogeek.com/370022/windows-registry-demystified-what-you-can-do-with-it/
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