The Windows Registry is a collection of databases of configuration settings for Microsoft Windows operating systems. Show This part of Windows stores much of the information and settings for software programs, hardware devices, user preferences, and operating system configurations. For example, when a new program is installed, a new set of instructions and file references may be added to the registry in a specific location for the program, and others that may interact with it, to refer to for more information like where the files are located, which options to use in the program, etc. In many ways, the registry can be thought of as a kind of DNA for the Windows operating system.
It's not necessary for all Windows applications to use the Windows Registry. Some programs store their configurations in XML or other types of files instead of the registry, and others are entirely portable and store their data in an executable file. The Windows Registry is accessed and configured using the Registry Editor program, a free registry editing utility included by default with every version of Microsoft Windows going back to Windows 95. Registry Editor isn't a program you download. Instead, it can be accessed by executing regedit from the Command Prompt or from the search or Run box from the Start menu. See How to Open Registry Editor if you need help. This editor is the face of the registry and is the way to view and make changes to the registry, but it's not the registry itself. Technically, the registry is the collective name for various database files located in the Windows installation directory. The registry contains registry values (which are instructions), located within registry keys (folders that contain more data), all within one of several registry hives (folders that categorize all the data in the registry using subfolders). Making changes to these values and keys change the configuration that a particular value controls. Making changes to registry values solves a problem, answers a question, or alters a program in some way: The registry is constantly referenced by Windows and other programs. When you make changes to nearly any setting, changes are also made to the appropriate areas in the registry, though these changes are sometimes not realized until you reboot the computer. Considering how important the Windows Registry is, backing up the parts of it you're changing, before you change them, is very important. Registry backup files are saved as REG files. See How to Back up the Windows Registry for help generating manual backups. Additionally, just in case you need it, here's our How to Restore the Windows Registry tutorial, which explains how to import REG files back into the Registry Editor. The Windows Registry and the Microsoft Registry Editor program are available in nearly every Windows version including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98, and Windows 95.
Even though the registry is available in almost every Windows version, some very small differences do exist between them. The registry has replaced autoexec.bat, config.sys, and nearly all the INI files that contained configuration information in MS-DOS and in very early versions of Windows.
The SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM, and DEFAULT registry files, among others, are stored in newer versions of Windows (Windows XP through Windows 11) in this System32 folder: Older versions of Windows use the %WINDIR% folder to store registry data as DAT files. Windows 3.11 uses only one registry file for the entire Windows Registry, called REG.DAT. Windows 2000 keeps a backup copy of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE System key that it uses to troubleshoot a problem with the existing one.
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Tell us why! In computing, configuration files (commonly known simply as config files) are files used to configure the parameters and initial settings for some computer programs. They are used for user applications, server processes and operating system settings. Some applications provide tools to create, modify, and verify the syntax of their configuration files; these sometimes have graphical interfaces. For other programs, system administrators may be expected to create and modify files by hand using a text editor, which is possible because many are human-editable plain text files. For server processes and operating-system settings, there is often no standard tool, but operating systems may provide their own graphical interfaces such as YaST or debconf. Some computer programs only read their configuration files at startup. Others periodically check the configuration files for changes. Users can instruct some programs to re-read the configuration files and apply the changes to the current process, or indeed to read arbitrary files as a configuration file. There are no definitive standards or strong conventions.  Configuration files and operating systemsUnix and Unix-like operating systemsAcross Unix-like operating systems many different configuration-file formats exist, with each application or service potentially having a unique format, but there is a strong tradition of them being in human-editable plain text, and a simple key–value pair format is common. Filename extensions of .cnf, .conf, .cfg, .cf or .ini are often used. Almost all formats allow comments, in which case, individual settings can be disabled by prepending with the comment character. Often the default configuration files contain extensive internal documentation in the form of comments[1][2] and man files are also typically used to document the format and options available. System-wide software often uses configuration files stored in /etc, while user applications often use a "dotfile" – a file or directory in the home directory prefixed with a period, which in Unix hides the file or directory from casual listing. Some configuration files run a set of commands upon startup. A common convention is for such files to have "rc" in their name,[3] typically using the name of the program then an "(.)rc" suffix e.g. ".xinitrc", ".vimrc", ".bashrc", "xsane.rc". See run commands for further details. By contrast, IBM's AIX uses an Object Data Manager (ODM) database to store much of its system settings. MS-DOSMS-DOS itself primarily relied on just one configuration file, CONFIG.SYS. This was a plain text file with simple key–value pairs (e.g. DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS) until MS-DOS 6, which introduced an INI-file style format. There was also a standard plain text batch file named AUTOEXEC.BAT that ran a series of commands on boot. Both these files were retained up to Windows 98SE, which still ran on top of MS-DOS. An example CONFIG.SYS for MS-DOS 5: DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\ANSI.SYS FILES=30 SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS /E:512 /P DOS applications used a wide variety of individual configuration files, most of them binary, proprietary and undocumented - and there were no common conventions or formats.[citation needed] Microsoft WindowsThe early Microsoft Windows family of operating systems heavily utilized plain-text INI files (from "initialization"). These served as the primary mechanism to configure the operating system and application features.[4] The APIs to read and write from these still exist in Windows, but after 1993, Microsoft began to steer developers away from using INI files and toward storing settings in the Windows Registry, a hierarchical database to store configuration settings, which was introduced that year with Windows NT. macOSThe Property List is the standard configuration file format in macOS (as well as in iOS, NeXTSTEP, GNUstep and Cocoa applications). It uses the filename extension .plist. IBM OS/2IBM's OS/2 uses a binary format, also with a .INI suffix, but this differs from the Windows versions. It contains a list of lists of untyped key–value pairs.[5] Two files control system-wide settings: OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI. Application developers can choose whether to use them or to create a specific file for their applications. Serialization formatsA number of general-purpose serialization formats exist that can represent complex data structures in an easily stored format, and these are often used as a basis for configuration files, particularly in open-source and platform-neutral software applications and libraries. The specifications describing these formats are routinely made available to the public, thus increasing the availability of parsers and emitters across programming languages. Examples include: JSON, XML, and YAML. See also
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What is the collective term for software versions, os settings, and configuration file settings?
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