The Windows Registry - what is it and what can you do with it?

Описание: If you've been using Windows for any length of time, you've probably heard about the registry. There are suggestions on tweaking or controlling many different program behaviors, or even enabling things that were otherwise disabled. Seems like a pretty powerful tool! But what, exactly, is it?

This is the Windows registry, a system that was implemented back in the 1990s to make it easier for Windows and its software to store all their settings in a centralized place with centralized security. Some of those design choices have consequences we're still having to deal with today, but there are other behaviors that can be really quite powerful if you learn how to take advantage of them!

EXTRA CREDIT:
More often than not, a "corrupted user profile" has actually experienced corruption in the user's registry hive, NTUSER.DAT. Unlike the Windows system hives (which stay loaded all the time), user hives get loaded and unloaded regularly--and sometimes, it "leaks" on user logout (the user hive is unable to be fully detached because something was still accessing it at the time). The user hives are therefore especially prone to accidental corruption.
If you export the registry (or a section of it) to a .reg file, you'll see that it's just text that you can edit in Notepad. This makes .reg files a really easy way of sharing specific registry settings, or even entire branches of the registry tree. Just remember, when it gets stored to the actual registry hives, it's converted back into binary format--the .reg files are just the exported form!
Seriously, take backups. I'm a little cavalier about it, but even I take backups if I'm deleting or making mass modifications to the registry. Exports to .reg files are probably the easiest backups to take, especially because you can just right-click a particular registry "folder" and export that specific branch of code on the spot before making a change.
Thanks to ‪@TheAnigai‬ for suggesting today's topic!