Information and Articles
Search Website:

Spyware and Viruses







What is The Windows Registry?




When researching information for important projects, always cross check your work with multiple sources to ensure you receive a diverse selection of information on the subject matter. We do our best to ensure the content contained on this site is as accurate as possible, however things like statistics and time sensitive material may become outdated rather quickly. So if your research is for a school project or term paper, or any other reason that requires complete correctness the Ez Submit website's Spyware and Viruses category and the What is The Windows Registry? article is a great place to start due to our volume of information and broad range of resources, however "always" cross check facts and opinions to ensure corectness.

Ez Submit is dedicated to providing reviews, learning materials, answers to questions, home work help, articles, assignment resources and we pride ourselves on offering a diverse resource completely free.. Because everyone loves free stuff, myself included. So, with that said i hope we helped you in your research and if so feel free to bookmark us and come back again!

The Windows registry is a database which stores settings and choices for the operating system for Microsoft Windows 32-bit versions, 64-bit versions and Windows Mobile.

It contains information and settings for all the hardware, software, users, and preferences of the PC. Whenever a user makes changes to "Control Panel" settings, or file associations, system policies, or installed software, the changes are reflected and stored in the registry.

The registry is actually a big file where a lot of setting can be stored.

This file has been around quite a while and has had different names.

The first windows version that used the windows registry to store settings was windows 3.11 and the registry in that version of windows was called Reg.dat.

In Windows 95 & 98 the registry files are named User.dat and System.dat and are stored in the \Windows\ directory.

Windows ME called the registry files, Classes.dat, User.dat, and System.dat and stored them in the \Windows\ directory.

Finally the newest versions of windows like, Windows NT, 2000, 2003, & XP stores the registry files like this,

The Registry files are stored in %SystemRoot%\System32\Config\:
• Sam
• Security
• Software
• System
• Default
• Userdiff
• NTUSER.dat
• The NTUSER.dat file is stored in the profile folder.

The Windows Registry was introduced to tidy up the old way of storing text entries in INI files. These entries had previously been used to store configuration settings for Windows programs.

The ini files where stored in a lot of different directories and many programs used their own ini file for some or all of their settings. This way of using ini files all over the system, made them difficult to keep track of and handle in an easy and logical way.

What's Good with the Registry

Changing from having one or more INI Files per program to one centralised registry has some obvious and some not so obvious benefits:

* The registry keeps machine configuration separate from user configuration. When a user logs into a Windows NT/XP/2003 computer, their registry settings are merged with the system wide settings. This allows programs to more easily keep per-user configuration, as they can just work with the 'current user' key, whereas in the past they tended to just keep system-wide per-program settings. There are always some system wide settings that are common for all users though.

* Group Policy allows administrators on a Windows-based computer network to centrally manage program and policy settings. This is not used in a house environment, only in corporations with a dedicated logon server.

* Because the registry is accessed through a special API it is available to scripts and remote management using WMI. Each script does not have to be customised for every application's unique configuration file layouts and restrictions.

* The registry can be accessed as one item over a network connection for remote management/support, including from scripts, using the standard API.

* It can be backed up more easily, in that it is just a small number of files in specific locations.
Bad things with the Registry
Not all that shines is gold. The Registry introduces some problems as well:

* It is a single point of failure - damage to the Registry can render a Windows system unbootable, in extreme cases to a point that can not be fixed, and requires a full reinstall of Windows. This is why it is so important to use registry scan and repair utilities, while the registry still can be repaired.

* Any program which wants to manipulate the registry must use special Windows API functions whereas a configuration file can be manipulated using normal text file-processing techniques.

* Configuration files can contain comments to help the user by explaining what values are for and how they can be changed, the registry cannot. And the registry use something called guids in a large scale. Long strange unique numbers that is completely meaningless to humans. Making handling much harder.

* It is more difficult to backup - it cannot be done 'live' therefore it is always in use, and thus requires special software such as ntbackup.

* Restoring parts of the registry is hard therefore you cannot easily extract data from backed up registry files

* Any application that doesn't uninstall properly, or doesn't have an uninstaller, can leave entries in the registry, which can lead over time to increased file size and decreased performance. And once again, here's the major reason why you must use a registry scan/clean and repair software.

The registry will be redone once more with the release of the new Vista Operating System from Microsoft.

Ez Submit: http://www.ez-submit.net

The article above titled What is The Windows Registry? may be published on your website, simply use the RSS link below to obtain the URL to paste in to your site. Ez Submit is an article repository housing nearly 45,000 different articles on various subjects, so feel free to browse around for other quality articles.

Information is a valuable commodity, reading and learning from such resources helps to obtain a better understanding on the Spyware and Viruses topic. With an understanding, you are able to make informed decisions.

We have also located 10 other articles related to this one, so we have listed them below along with this weeks hottest sections, so if What is The Windows Registry? didn't suit what you were looking for or if you have more questions check out the menu links below to browse around. Also our Business and Home Business sections have been mentioned in official offline school resources for Business Study papers, so these are worth checking out as well as the Spyware and Viruses you are currently viewing.
RSS Feed

Want Spyware and Viruses Articles delivered Via RSS? Simply click the XML icon above



Feel free to view the articles listed above, we found them similar to What is The Windows Registry? so they may also interest you, some are in the Spyware and Viruses category or other subcategories.
Design by SEO Company Info: SEO Forums

Providing Articles on everything from Credit