The Windows Registry is a critical 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 introduction in Windows 98 to replace the text INI files used in MS-DOS and Windows 3.x setup 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 installation of MS-DOS and Windows 3.x. For Windows 98 and later, Microsoft had to find a more efficient method. And it’s that it would be impossible to include system management like Windows 11 in them today, given the immensity of its software/hardware ecosystem.

The Windows registry is thus a hierarchical database (in the form of a tree) 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 root configuration information of the currently logged in user, user folder, screen color or control panel settings.
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE: In this group, the specific parameters of the common computer for all users of the same computer are stored.
• 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 to which Windows makes constant references during its 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 the use of the device 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, a step beyond Regedit

Microsoft offers an internal registry management application. His name is regedit and allows you to view the registry file, make appropriate changes to it, or enter new passwords. 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 so you can recover. The System Backup tool also allows you to save the entire registry, startup files, and personal data.

A very powerful tool, true, but so what lack of 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 in, a free and small utility that has its strong point in search 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 you can download separately from its website.

When you open RegScanner, you will see two separate screens, search and results. The first allows us to search for the exact name of the value we want to find, examine values, dates or keys. You can also search for its “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 you can search in the five big groups of the registry or any of them if it is known.

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

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

This is a useful tool RegScanner what does its name say 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.

To learn more, Microsoft offers documents for a detailed look at the Windows registry. And if what you need is a more powerful application than regeditThere are others alternative to official registry editors What Registry Explorer. Available on GitHub, it’s free and open source and aims to make editing easier and offer more functionality than the Windows internal tool.