Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

“Just Browsing, Thanks”

The first thing you should learn to do with RegEdit is to browse around the Registry and see what’s there. The Explorer-style interface makes the Registry’s data very “discoverable”; that’s a fancy way of saying you can start off with a high-level view, then see as much or as little detail as you like as you become more comfortable with the Registry’s structure.

Navigating with the Keyboard

RegEdit follows the standard Windows conventions for keyboard navigation--not surprising when you consider that the key pane itself is built with the standard tree-list control. When an item is selected, it is highlighted using the standard system highlight color, and you can maneuver about by using the keys shown in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1. Navigational Keys for RegEdit

Key	When Used in...	Action
Tab	Key or value panes	Switches focus between the key and value panes
Return	Value pane	Opens selected item for editing
Up/down arrows	Key or value panes	Moves focus to the next or previous item in the current pane
Left/right arrows	Key pane	If selected item has subkeys, expands (left arrow) or collapses (right arrow) it; if not, moves to next or previous item
Left/right arrows	Value pane	Scrolls the value pane left or right
PgUp/PgDn	Key or value panes	Moves the focus up or down one pane’s worth of data
Home and End	Key or value panes	Moves to top or bottom of pane’s contents
Backspace	Key pane	Moves the focus to the current key’s parent
Keypad *