But who cares? Is the storage mechanism nearly as important as the settings
themselves?
The value of diving into the Registry is in discovering the things in the Registry
that can only be changed by editing it directly. You can fix misbehaving
applications, uncover hidden features, and turn off annoying habits of Windows
you thought you had to live with. Indeed, a lot of the solutions in this
book take advantage of a little Registry hacking.
84 | Chapter 3: The Registry
Now for the obligatory warning. You can irreversibly disable certain components
of Windows Vista??”or even prevent Windows from loading altogether??”
by changing certain settings in the Registry. Sure, most modern software is
designed to repair broken settings, but it??™s assured that very few software
developers have taken the time to anticipate all the weird things you??™ll
undoubtedly do to your PC. I??™m certainly not suggesting that you run and
hide, but rather that you employ some of the safeguards described on these
pages??”such as backing up??”before you start hacking the Registry to bits.
For instance, take a few moments to create a Registry patch??”explained later
in this chapter??”before you change a setting, and you??™ll thank me later.
The Registry Editor
Most of the changes to the Registry are performed behind the scenes by the
applications that you run, as well as by Windows??”settings and other information
are read from and written to the Registry constantly.
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