Registry for MS Windows 2000
The hierarchical database - Registry - for Windows stores settings and options for configuration on MS Windows operating systems.
The Windows Registry provides information about the settings for low-level operating system and applications running on the platforms. The kernel, user interface, device drivers, services, SAM and third party applications are some platforms which use the Window Registry.
Windows registry also offers a way to access counters to profile performance of the system.
The Windows Registry was first launched in the market with Windows 3.1 to store important configuration information for COM-based components.
But the use of Windows Registry extended with the launch of Windows NT and Windows 95. It included a large number of per-program INI files wherein configuration settings for Windows had been stored.
The Windows registry includes two basic elements values and keys.
Inside keys, Registry Values are stored and they actually represent name/data pairs.
Manipulation of registry values is carried out by the API functions of Windows, which access names of values discretely from their key paths and/or from Windows handle that acknowledges the parent key.
However, the terminology is misguiding to some extent, as values are identical to an associative array, where basic terminology would recognize the values name portion as a “key”.
Window 3s 16-bit registry presents the terms, wherein keys included merely a value that is unnamed (which required to be a string), but they couldnt have arbitrary duo of name/data.
The Windows registry can be edited in a manual way in MS Windows by executing regedt32.exe or regedit.exe in the directory of Windows.
However, sloppy registry editing can lead to a slow PC or losses that cant be reversed. So, performing registry backups must be the priority, and the same has been advised by the software giant Microsoft and various other professionals, authors and editors of business magazines.
A straightforward implementation of the present-day registry tool surfaced in Windows 3.x operating system, dubbed as “Registration Info Editor” or simply “Registration Editor”.
Typically, it was merely a database of applications that are used to edit OLE objects embedded in documents.
But the users need to be cautious as the two editors on the aforementioned platforms differ tremendously.
An integrated program of these two distinct programs was firstly seen in Windows XP. The operating system embraced the REGEDIT.EXE interface and infused the REGEDT32.EXE functionality into it.
These editors do not show such differences on Windows XP and newer systems. For instance - REGEDIT.EXE is the more refined and sophisticated editor, while REGEDT32.EXE is only a stub that invokes REGEDIT.EXE.
The Registry Editor permits users to carry out functions that follow:
- Importing and exporting .REG files, exporting data in the binary hive format
- Creating, manipulating, renaming and deleting registry keys, subkeys, values and value data
- Setting permissions based on ACLs (Windows NT-based systems only)
- Loading, manipulating and unloading registry hive format files (Windows NT-based systems only)
- Remotely editing the registry on another networked computer
Linux platform too allows for editing the registry with the assistance of an open source tool called Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.