Windows Vista™ Inside Out

Avoiding Registry Mishaps

The primary tool in Windows Vista for working directly with the registry is Registry Editor. You won’t find it anywhere on the Start Menu, however, and it doesn’t show up in the Start Menu Search box when you type its name; you must use the name of its executable file, Regedit.exe. To start Registry Editor, at a command prompt, type regedit.

The two most important things to know about Registry Editor are that it copies your changes immediately into the registry and that it has no Undo command. Registry Editor doesn’t wait for you to issue a File, Save command (it has no such command) before making changes in the registry files. And after you have altered some bit of registry data, the original data is gone forever—unless ...