Understand your registry

Registry tweaks can fix problems, boost performance and improve Windows features, and the risks are minimal as long as you follow our advice.

There are many ways to change your settings and your applications within Windows. You might click Edit > Preferences or Tools > Options, right-click on a system tray icon, or just poke around in your Control Panel. But the end result is almost always the same. When you’ve tweaked an option and clicked OK, the new setting will be stored in a central database called the registry.

Normally you don’t have to worry about low-level technical details of individual registry settings. But occasionally they can come in useful. If a program won’t start or can’t be reinstalled, for instance, it could be down to a corrupt registry setting: change it and you might fix the problem. Other applications have useful settings that can only be accessed from the registry, too.

There is a potential down side, though. If you delete the wrong registry setting you could corrupt an application, and even prevent Windows from loading on your next reboot. But then Windows Explorer can be dangerous, too, if you start randomly deleting things from the Windows or Program Files folders. Don’t worry though, as long as you’re cautious and sensible – registry editing actually poses very little risk.

Editing the registry

It makes sense to back up the registry before you begin an editing session (see our guide, below). Once you’ve done that, click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and press Enter to launch the Registry Editor. Hit Home to jump to the top of the registry, and you’ll see it’s divided into five sections:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT holds all your file associations.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER holds personal settings for your applications, Windows desktop configuration and more.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE has detailed system-wide information on installed applications, drivers, services and so on.
HKEY_USERS holds all of your userprofile files.
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG contains your hardware setup.

Each section is divided into folders, and so each individual key (piece of information) is specified in something similar to a hard-drive folder. The registered user and company name you entered when installing Windows, for example, are stored at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. If you want to change this, expand the tree by clicking the arrow to the left of each registry key name until you get to the right folder. Look for the keys RegisteredOwner and RegisteredOrganization on the right-hand side; to change one, double-click it and enter a new value.

Recent items

The best registry tweaks are quick and simple but surprisingly useful. Do you wish the Recent Items menu held more than 15 documents, for example? Then launch REGEDIT again, and browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Policies > Explorer (the full path, ending in Explorer, should be displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the window). Click Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value to create a new registry key, and call it MaxRecentDocs. Double-click the key, select Decimal, and enter 25 as the new value. Click OK, close REGEDIT and reboot. Continue to use your PC, and you should now find the Recent Items list will hold more documents, saving you the time and hassle of having to always track them down manually.

Sometimes you might even want to delete a registry key. For instance, does the Add and Remove Programs applet still list a program you uninstalled long ago? Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and find the folder representing that application. If you’re really sure you don’t need it any more, right-click that folder and select Delete. But if you can’t quite decide, then leave it for now. There’s no Undo if you change your mind later, so never delete any registry key unless you’re confident that it’s entirely safe to do so.

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