Windows® 8.1 IN DEPTH

29. Editing the Windows Registry

What Is the Registry?

The Windows Registry is a database in which Windows and application programs store configuration settings, startup information, hardware settings, user preferences, file locations, license and registration information, last-viewed file lists, and so on. The Registry holds a huge amount of information about installed program components and subcomponents (DLLs, COM objects, and so on). In addition, the Registry stores the associations between file types and the applications that create and use them. For example, the Registry holds the information that tells Windows to use Media Player when you click an MPG movie file. In the early days of DOS and Windows, programs stored this kind of information ...