Section 3.1. The Registry Editor


3.1. The Registry Editor

Although the Registry is stored in multiple files on your hard disk, it is represented by a single logical hierarchical structure, similar to the folders on your hard disk. The Registry Editor (Regedit.exe) is included with Windows XP to enable you to view and manually edit the contents of the Registry.

Don't confuse the Registry with the Registry Editor. Regedit.exe is just another application; most of the access to the Registry is performed behind the scenes by the applications that you run, as well as by Windows; settings and other information are read from and written to the Registry constantly.

When you open the Registry Editor, you'll see a window divided into two panes (as shown in Figure 3-1). The left side shows a tree with folders, and the right side shows the contents of the currently selected folder. Now, these aren't really foldersit's just a convenient and familiar method of organizing and displaying the information stored in your Registry.

Figure 3-1. The Registry Editor lets you view and change the contents of the Registry


Each branch (denoted by a folder icon in the Registry Editor) is called a key. Each key can contain other keys, as well as values. Values contain the actual information stored in the Registry, and keys are used only to organize the values. Keys are shown only in the left pane; values are shown only in the right pane (unlike Windows Explorer, where folders are shown in both panes).

To display the contents of a key (folder), simply click the desired key name on the left, and the values contained within the key will be listed on the right side. To expand a certain branch to show its subkeys, click on the plus sign [+] to the left of any folder or double-click on the name of the folder.

Editing the Registry generally involves navigating down through branches to a particular key and then modifying an existing value or creating a new key or value. You can modify the contents of any value by double-clicking it.

To add a new key or value, select New from the Edit menu, select what you want to add (Figure 3-2), and then type a name. You can rename any existing value and almost any key with the same method used to rename files in Windows Explorer: right-click on an object and click Rename, click on it twice (slowly), or just highlight it and press the F2 key. Lastly, you can delete a key or value by clicking on it and pressing the Del key or by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete.

Figure 3-2. Select New from the Edit menu to add a new key or value to any part of the Registry


You can't drag-drop keys or values here as you can with files in Windows Explorer. There is very little reason to drag a key or value from one place to another in the Registry, as the settings are highly location-dependent. A value in one key may have a different meaning than the same value in a different key. The exception is when you want to duplicate a key and all its contents (such as a file-type key), which is something you can do with Registry patches, explained later in this chapter.


You can search for text in key and value names by selecting Find from the Edit menu. See Section 3.3.3, later in this chapter, for tips on using this deceptively simple function. Lastly, select Refresh from the View menu to refresh the displayed portion of the Registry, in case another running application has changed, added, or removed a key or value since the Registry Editor last read the data.

The Registry's notion of a path is similar to Windows Explorer's. A Registry path is a location in the Registry described by the series of nested keys in which a setting is located. For example, if a particular value is in the Microsoft key under SOFTWARE, which is under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, the Registry path would be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft. Elsewhere in this book, when a setting is changed in the Registry, this type of Registry path is always provided. If you find that you're viewing the same Registry path often, you can use the Favorites menu to bookmark the item, allowing you to return to it easily (similar to the operation of the Favorites menu in Internet Explorer).



    Windows XP Annoyances For Geeks
    Fixing Windows XP Annoyances
    ISBN: 0596100531
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2003
    Pages: 97
    Authors: David A. Karp

    flylib.com © 2008-2017.
    If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net