Tune-up Blog

Change and Repair the Windows Registry

Not everyone wants to manually clean the Windows Registry but sometimes people just want to ensure the job gets done right. Well, if you're one of those people then you've come to the right place because I'm about to detail exactly how to safely edit the registry without causing a catastrophic error.

However, I just want to let you know that if you do really hurt your registry and render your computer unbootable then we don't take responsibility.

What Program to Use To Edit the Registry

Fortunately for us, every version of Windows is shipped with a utility called RegEdit, which stand for Registry Editor. To run it, all you have to do is go to Start, Run, then type in RegEdit. In the main screen of RegEdit you will see a tree on the left hand side that lets you modify different "keys" and on the right hand side you will see a panel that contains "values" that fall under each "key". You can also use the menu items at the top to export the registry or import it. You can also use the Find menu to locate hard to find values or keys. The Find functionality is great because it lets users that already know what they're looking for get to it quickly.

The Windows Registry Explained

There are 5 overall major keys that organize the Registry. Each of these major keys has related permissions and stores different types of data. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE affects everything on the system but HKEY_CURRENT_USER only stores settings for the currently logged in user. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT is used to store settings for COM applications and info for file extensions. If you do encounter file extension problems you can try looking under this major key HKEY_CURRENT_USER stores all the options that are specific to the logged in user so you can use this major key to check for settings related to most programs. If you are using system that has multiple accounts it might be better to first check under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG is just a cache file that stores transient values.

Changing the Windows Registry to Fix Errors

So now that you know how the registry is laid out, you can start looking for problems and fixing them. Locate the key you are searching for by using the Find features and either delete the entry or edit the value to the correct option. Make sure you do an export before you start so that you can restore the registry in the case of a serious error.