What does the registry do?

Answer 1

The Registry holds Windows system information. It can change each time you add or remove software, change your theme, edit the registry, etc. You can edit your registry by opening Command Prompt and typing Regedit.exe: however, do this only if you know what you're doing. Editing and modifying the registry is dangerous and could render your Windows OS unusable, forcing you to restore or reinstall.

Answer 2

Registry is a database used by windows to store configuration information. You can go to "run" and type regedit to see windows registry. If you are not a troubleshooter then don't change setting there. You can delete registry errors with registry cleaner software

Answer 3

In Windows, the system registry is a collection of important files that contain nearly every setting used by Windows and every program you have installed. That differs from Windows 3.x where every program installed created its own .INI files to store its settings, and they were scattered all over the hard drive. Starting with Windows 95, they consolidated that in to two files on the hard drive. More files, then known as hives, were added starting with Windows NT. Today, there are around a half dozen of these hive files, and most of them have no extension.

One problem is when programs get uninstalled the wrong way. The application's files and shortcuts may be missing, but its registry settings still exist. So that is what registry cleaners are for. The theory is that the more unused stuff in the registry, the slower it gets. However, according to Microsoft, that was only true in Windows 95, 98, and ME. In the NT-based versions, including XP, 7, and 8.x, a junked up registry should have very little impact on system performance.

Another type of registry tool is called a packer or defragmenter. That is a tool that simply rebuilds the registry by copying all the settings from the old registry files into new ones. Then when you reboot, the files get renamed and the packed registry is loaded. Just like deleting and adding files causes hard drive fragmentation, deleting and creating registry entries causes registry fragmentation that is independent of any file fragmentation of the registry hives. In some cases, such tools might even fix a corruption problem, though their purpose is to make the registry smaller. Unlike the registry cleaners, the registry packers do not actually change or delete any of the data. They only rebuild the containers while keeping the data the same as before. Any deleted entries that are trapped between the active entries are ignored and not copied.

Answer 4

In operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Utilites are rarely a single program file, but a suite of interconnecting programs.

The computer has to know how these programs should interact and how they should appear when run.

These system variables are stored in another program file, known a s a registry.

It is basically a long list, identifying programs, parts of programs, dynamic link libraries and binary code, depicting how they should be displayed.

When you install a program on your computer, you will notice it is not just a single file copy, but quite a process, which takes time.

This is what it is doing. It is registering the program with windows and writing not only the files to the hard drive, but adjusting and adding variables to the registry.

This is also why you need a removal program and not just delete.

When programs are removed, their reference in the registry must also be removed.

Inevitably bits get left behind and can cause the registry to be a bit of a mess and slow things down.

Answer 5

Registry is a database used by windows to store configuration information. You can go to "run" and type regedit to see windows registry.

Answer 6

Registry is a database used by windows to store configuration information. You can go to "run" and type regedit to see windows registry.