hey_man's Windows Registry Information

The WIndows Registry can be considered the heart of the Windows
Operating System. Within this mysterious and hidden portion of your
Windows system contains the keys to getting a detailed look at whats going on,
as well as the access to making changes either for advanced customization
or performance enhancements. The registry also holds key elements that
are useful in understanding in an effort to secure your own system
or exploit one of someone elses.

Before you begin exploring this portion of your own operating system
its important to note that blind experimentation can cause extensive
problems to your computer, how it performs, and if it even performs at all.
Don't let this warning scare you from developing your quest of further understanding.

There are countless tools and further links to information available
to you out there on this subject. Just knowing its there is the first step
in learning more about it. At first glance it will possibly look very
confusing to you. In a worse case it may look like something you can safely
just play around with. The seemingly discouraging tone you will often hear
mentioned in the discussion of the registry is primarialy aimed to prevent
a person who knows less than they think they do from causing themselves problems.
In a worse case scenario you will not make your computer so useless
that it will need to be replaced, but you can do enough damage that may
require you to completely reinstall Windows as well as all your other programs.
Understanding the registry is important to both owners of new machines
for needed security alterations, as well as users of old machines who
are most likely in need of some major house cleaning.

To start things off you should probably copy any files you feel unwilling to
ever part with over to some other type of media like a tape or Zip Drive or
another hard drive (not just another partition on the same drive).
It is also highly recomended that you make a back up copy of your current
Windows Registry. This can be done by either using your system tools or directly
from within the registry editor utility regedit.exe which can be run by clicking
your Windows START button, selecting RUN and typing in the name REGEDIT
after typing that name in click on the OK option and you will be looking directly
at your Windows Registry and ready to explore into it further as well as
make any changes you desire.

Just below here I've either uploaded for you or linked directly to some useful
utilities you will want to download and install on your own system before
starting here. If your unsure how to either download or install these then
lets use this as your first clue at identifying a very serious potential
problem and you should stop at this point before even considering to
think about your registry, let alone do anything in it. The registry will
still be there later for you after you have learned some more of the general
computing basics you currently lack.

WINDOWS REGISTRY INFORMATION AND TOOLS

This first download I have for you is actualy a Windows help file.
It was put together by the folks at regedit.com and doesn't contain any
tools or programs, just an easy to use and very informative collection
of important information in regards to working with the registry.
Just download the zip file to anywhere you'll be able to find on your local
computer and unzip it to where ever you like. Once its unzipped you will
still be able to move it where ever you choose. Once unziped just click
on it and it and its self explanatory from there. Here's a brief description of it.

This next tool was created by Microsoft and originally supplied with
Microsoft Visual Basic version 4.0 for Windows. When you install,
uninstall, and reinstall programs on your computer, registry keys
are created, modified, or deleted. Over time, your computer's registry
may begin to contain corrupted, unused, and unnecessary registry keys,
especially if keys are not removed when you uninstall a program.
As a result, you may begin to experience problems when using OLE
to embed objects or Automation to control other programs. The RegClean
utility is designed to clean up unnecessary registry entries in your registry.
While this tool tends to lean more towards safe than being 100% effective,
it can help do some general house keeping and minor repairs on your registry.
Once you extract the utility from the zip file you can move it to where
ever you'd like on your local system. Running it is easy, just click on it.

Another tool usefull in cleaning up your system is called "Registry Pruner".
It can be used to clean up your Registry's SharedDLLs key.
Orphaned entries can cause install and uninstall programs to misbehave,
and can even trigger bogus Registry Corrupted error messages.
The program can also remove "ghosts", entries in the Control Panel's
Add/Remove Programs list that remain even after a program has been uninstalled.

Here's something else you may find useful. Registry Key Enumerator
is a free utility that lets you easily make value comparisons between
different keys in your Registry. It can be used as an aid in utilizing
Registry information in documentation or for examining the Registry
for research purposes. To use it, just type a key (including the root)
into the edit box and click on the Enumerate button. Or, copy a key name
directly from Regedit. From pull-down menus, you can launch a copy of
Regedit as well as back up your Registry. One nice touch: The backup
includes a small text file with instructions for restoring your Registry.

A Wealth Of Information

This next link will take you to pages I copied from somewhere in the
public domain for reference use on my own local personal Intranet server.
I have no idea where I copied them from or I'd just post a direct link
to it all right there for you. Instead all I can do is the next best thing
and mirror them off my server over here for your own use. The information
is from a book written by Tim Daniels called 1001 Secrets for Windows NT Registry
and contains a wealth of information.