Fix The Windows Registry Using The RegCure Free Scan And RegEdit

What Is The Windows Registry?

The Windows registry is a hugely important part of the Windows operating system and is present in all recent versions of Windows computers. It has taken the place of the plethora of .ini files that were once prevalent on Windows computers. Specifically, Windows 95 and later uses the registry in order to determine, alter, and change settings. Hardware and software settings are also stored within the confines of the registry. Because of the amount of changes that are constantly being made to the registry entries it is very easy for the information it holds to become corrupt, incomplete, or unusable.

The Registry Editor

The Windows registry cannot be edited using standard software, and instead you must use the Windows registry editor that is packaged as part of your operating system. The Windows registry editor can be found by opening the “Start” menu, selecting the “Run” command and typing regedit or regedit32 on Windows NT machines. It is a good idea to include a shortcut to the Start menu, especially if you intend to use the registry editor on a frequent basis to cure Windows and other software problems or to tweak the numerous settings that can be found.

Registry Entry Identification

Using the free scan provided by RegCure it is probable that you will be presented with a long list of registry entries that may require fixing or solving. Many of these can be fixed by hand if you know where to look and what you are looking at as well as the correct settings. In order to get a better idea of the information you are looking at the following are the main registry entry classes that you will come across.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

These contain information pertaining to user interface information. Any drag and drop and similar actions that you perform are stored in this area ensuring that the changes you make are stored on a permanent basis. There are likely to be a lot of these entries in your registry, but they are by no means necessarily bad things. Deleting the wrong entries may not prove particularly harmful or fatal to your computer but it can undo a lot of your personal settings and preferences.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

All the sub entries found under this class contain information related to the user that is currently logged on to the machine, i.e. you. This includes personal settings and preferences as well as more important information. Some of these include

Sound events
Control panel settings
Startup program paths
Keyboard layout
Network information
Remote access information
Software Configuration Settings

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

This information is related to all users of the machine. This generic information determines how the machine operates when there are no user specific settings (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) to account for and includes the following information:

Configuration
Hardware information and configuration
Network information and configuration
Security settings
Software information, configuration, and settings
Operating and general system settings

HKEY_USERS

Every user that has an account on your computer has settings stored under HKEY_USERS. Every user also has a user specific sub heading that is used to differentiate from one person to the next. This information is used to determine the settings when the current user identification is known.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

Information related to the current configuration of hardware on the computer. This information is collected and used by the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section also.

HKEY_DYN_DATA

This contains all dynamic data regarding the hardware on your computer. Plug and play hardware information is updated, added, and removed as the respective actions are performed with any hardware.

Using The RegCure Free Scan

By using the RegCure free scan you will be given a list of all registry entries that are currently invalid, missing, or no longer required. Using the information above as well as more specific date related to each item you can decide what action should be taken with each option. This information can only be used and edited by using the Windows registry editor as detailed at the beginning of this article.