The Registry in a Nutshell
The Windows XP Registry is the central repository in which Windows and most properly written Windows applications store all configuration information, including such items as these:
Hardware settings
Software configuration information
User settings to build the user profile
Licensing and registration information
Application usage histories
Recently accessed file lists
Software associations to identify which application opens a file based on the file's extension
Long ago, in the days when 8088s through 80386s still roamed the earth, every program with settings to maintain did so through an INI file. Windows stored most of the basic startup and system configuration information in either SYSTEM.INI or WINDOWS.INI. Now, almost ...
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