Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

What Does the Registry Do?

The concept of a central repository that holds all the system’s configuration data may strike you as a boon (since it keeps applications and services from scattering their settings in hundreds of small files buried in odd locations) or a danger (since it provides a single point of failure). The truth is somewhere in between these extremes. The Registry provides a neat, tidy way for applications, device drivers, and kernel services to record configuration data. That data can be used by, and easily shared between, the original owner or by other system components. At the same time, if the Registry is damaged, the effects can range from not being able to use a single application to not being able to boot Windows 2000 at all. (Chapter 3, details the backup and recovery tools you can use to keep this single point of failure from causing trouble.)

It Holds Lots of Important Stuff

The chief role of the Registry in Windows 2000 is as a repository for configuration data. In this role, it acts as a sort of super-librarian; system components can look for their own configuration information in the Registry, then use what they find to control how they interact with other system components. The “important stuff” stored in the Registry falls into six separate categories; each category’s data is gathered during a particular stage of the boot process, as shown in Figure 1-4.

Figure 1-4. Registry data exchange

Hardware configuration data

As part of the Windows 2000 boot loader’s ...