The Windows registry is an essential part of all Microsoft operating systems fully controls PC operation, its appearance, application launch, hardware behavior or access to all its functions. A tool of enormous power, but not easy to use.

This feature has changed very little since its debut in Windows 98, replacing the text INI files that were used in MS-DOS and Windows 3.x configuration files. Perhaps aware of the not always positive results of touching the registry (if you don’t know what you’re doing), Microsoft hasn’t tried to make it easy to use.

Why is the Windows registry so important?

Some of you may remember the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files that were used for the initial configuration of MS-DOS and Windows 3.x. For Windows 98 and later, Microsoft had to find a more efficient method. And today, they would be impossible to include in managing a system like Windows 11 given the immensity of its software/hardware ecosystem.

In this way, the Windows registry is a hierarchical (tree-shaped) database composed of groups of keys, subkeys, and finally registry values ​​of various types. As you will see in the picture, it consists of five large groups:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT: Information stored here ensures that the correct program opens when a file is opened using Windows Explorer.
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER: This information is associated with the user profile and contains information about the root configuration of the currently logged-in user, user folders, screen colors, or control panel settings.
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE: This group stores the specific parameters of a common computer for all its users.
• HKEY_USERS: Contains all user profiles actively loaded on the computer.
• HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG: Stores information about the hardware profile used by the local computer at system startup.

It should be said that this file contains information that Windows constantly references it during operationsuch as individual user profiles, applications installed on the computer, types of documents each can create, property sheet settings for folders and application icons, hardware that exists on the system, ports used, and long etc.

This is why the Windows 10 registry is increased by the mere use of the operating system, installing/uninstalling applications or any hardware components we add or replace. It’s not uncommon for all of this to slow down your computer or leave a trail of faulty or corrupted inputs and inconsistencies that mar the user experience, causing everything from small errors to serious crashes that can reach the dreaded “screens of death.” .”

RegScanner, one step beyond Regedit

Microsoft offers an internal registry management application. Is called regedit and allows you to view the registry file, make appropriate changes to it, or enter new keys. Additionally, it allows you to export all of its contents or the contents of a specific branch to a .reg file in case something goes wrong and you can restore it. The System Backup tool also allows you to save the entire registry, startup files, and personal data.

A very powerful tool, true, but it lacks usability. One of the biggest headaches when working with the Windows Registry is finding the keys and values ​​we want. You can use the Find function, but it doesn’t always work if you don’t know the exact name of the value.

This is where RegScanner comes into play, a free and small tool that has its strong point in searching for keys and values ​​using different variables. It is available in a portable, installable and 64-bit version that works from Windows XP to Windows 11. It also has a Spanish version with a small .ini file that can be downloaded separately from the same website.

When you open RegScanner, you will see two separate screens, search and results. The first allows us to search by the exact name of the value we want to find, examine values, dates or keys. You can also search for your “exact match”, by string, by binary value, DWORD or others.

The search can also be refined by date if, for example, we know when we installed some software and we can search in the five big groups of the registry, or in any of them, if known.

Once the desired search is found, it can be easily exported as a REG file (which will overwrite the corresponding value in the registry when run) that can be used later, shared or exported to another computer.

You can also save keys and values ​​as a text file or double-click to access the corresponding registry entry.

This is a useful tool RegScanner who does what his name says search the Windows registry more efficiently than Regedit. Of course, its use, like the registry itself, is not nearly as intuitive, and its use is intended for administrators and advanced users.

If you want to learn more, Microsoft offers documents to learn more about the Windows registry. And if what you need is a more powerful application than regeditThere are others alternative registry editors to the official one as Registry Explorer. Available on GitHub, it’s free and open source, and aims to make editing easier and offer more features than the Windows internal tool.