Adding and Deleting Registry Keys and Values
The Registry Editor, as mentioned earlier, is the primary tool for viewing, modifying, and deleting data in the Registry. And as you’ll see later in this chapter, it also allows you to conveniently import and export data (via Registry patches), which can be thought of as another form of data entry.
Basic data entry in Registry Editor is fairly simple. In order to type data, you must first create a value to hold it. Depending on your goal, you may also need to create a new key in which to place the value.
To create a new key or value, use Edit
→ New. The key or value
then appears within the currently selected key, with the name New Key
or New Value #1, respectively. A new string value will have the null
string as its value; a new binary value will show the following
message in parentheses: “(zero length binary
value).” A new DWORD value will show up as zero:
0x00000000
(0)
. You can then
edit that value (see later in this chapter) to change it. New keys
aren’t created empty, either. They all contain the
(Default)
value described in the previous section.
To delete a key or value, select it
and click Edit → Delete, or
simply press the Del
key. But be warned,
there’s no undelete, so you might want to first
write out the branch containing the key you’re about
to delete as a .reg
file (see Section 8.5 and Section 8.6, later in this chapter). Or,
you can use Edit → Rename to rename the value or key. Since applications access values and keys ...
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