Sooner or later, every expert Windows user has to tangle with the Windows registry. Windows uses this massive repository of settings to control almost everything in hardware, software, and networking, and almost every Windows application stores its settings here, too. The registry stores thousands of options that can’t be changed by checking a box in a dialog or by filling in an entry in a menu. The only way to change or add those settings is by getting your hands dirty and modifying the registry itself. When you need to make a simple change in the registry, Windows’s built-in Regedit.exe application lets you search for the data you want and then lets you change it—but that’s about all it does. If you want to do anything more complex, you’ll want a full-fledged registry editor like my personal favorite, Registry Workshop ($29.95, direct), a program worth every penny of its cost.
Registry Workshop compares to Regedit.exe in more or less the same way that a simple calculator program compares to Excel. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you mistyped your name when you installed Windows, and now every Windows application you use displays your mistyped name as the Registered Owner. To fix this in Regedit.exe, you’d have to search for the first mistyped version of your name, open the registry key for editing, correct the misspelling, close the registry key, search for the next mistyped version, and so on. You might need to do this thirty times. In Registry Workshop, you enter your misspelled name in the Find menu and wait a few seconds for the program to display a list of all registry keys that contain the misspelling. You then go to the Search menu, choose “Replace in Find results,” enter the correct spelling, and click OK.
Registry Basics
The program can perform a lot of tricks more complex than this, and to understand those tricks, it helps a basic understanding of how the registry is organized. Data in the registry is organized into keys, values, and data. Each key is a container for one or more values, and each value contains text, numbers, or binary data. Keys are organized in a tree-structured hierarchy. For example, in the branch of the registry tree that contains information about the current version of Windows, you’ll find a key named Themes. The Themes key contains multiple values, including one named Drop Shadow. If the data inside this value is FALSE, this tells Windows not to display drop shadows in the current visual theme. Windows’ own Regedit.exe uses a two-paned window, with the tree of keys on the left and the values and data in spreadsheet-style rows on the right.
Registry Workshop includes similar windows, plus a third pane below them that displays Find results, a undoable history of recent actions, and a pane that can compare the results of two different searches—including a search in a Windows system on a different drive that you may have
plugged into your computer in order to solve problems with the system.
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Registry Workshop Makes it Easy
Registry Workshop improves on Regedit.exe by letting you drag and drop keys around the tree-structured display, or cut, copy, and paste keys by selecting options in the right-click pop-up menu. When you right-click on a registry value in Regedit.exe you get options to edit, delete, or rename the value. When you right-click on a registry value in Registry Workshop, you get a far more flexible set of options. If the data includes a filename or folder name, you can open its folder in Windows Explorer. You can compare the content of keys with the same name in different branches of the registry, to see the difference between system-wide settings and user-specific settings.
Advanced users who know what they’re doing can create “symbolic links,” which allow the entries that you make at one branch in the registry tree to appear instantly in another branch. This is a technique Microsoft uses to make the Registry easier to navigate. Advanced users can borrow it to, for example, conveniently access a number of keys normally at disparate places in the registry via symbolic links to them in a single branch.
Registry-editing can be dangerous to your system, and Registry Workshop comes packed with safeguards. You can create and restore “snapshots” of the registry, and you can even close the program, test your changes in Windows, and then reopen the program to undo one or more the changes you made earlier. I’ve used all these features when making risky changes to the registry, and this program has never failed me yet.
You can find other alternatives to Regedit.exe, including the freeware Registry Explorer, which uses Windows Explorer as its interface (www.regxplor.com) and the Registrar Registry Manager from Resplendence Software, a $54.95 package that includes a command-line version. PCMag even has its own entrant into the field, RegistryMaster (which is an XP-era tool). I’ve tried these and other programs, and have always come back to Registry Workshop and its nearly ideal combination of lucid interface design and imaginatively-chosen, powerful features. I bought my license five years ago, and I’ve made use of the vendor’s free updates ever since. For someone who works with the Windows registry as much as I do, Registry Workshop is one of the greatest software bargains ever.