Some Instructions

• Contents
• Home
• Your System
• Accessing the Internet
• Backing Up Your stuff
• File Formats
• Laptop systems
• Speed
• Hidden Files On Windows
• Registry
• Operating system
• Changing Internet Explorer Browser Agent
• Your computer and fonts
• Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?
• Windows XP
• Setting up DNS in Windows XP
• Improving Performance
• Control Your Power

On Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000 the system stores much of the information about your configuration in a place known as the Registry. Virtually everything about your computer's operating system, applications and environment are stored in this location.

You can examine this data using a program called REGEDT32. If you need to run it, select the RUN command from the Start menu, and enter REGEDT32 (REGEDIT on Windows 95 and 98). If you are just examining data you should always set Options "Read Only Mode" to on. This will keep you from accidentally making changes which damage your system.

That's the danger with this program - you can easily render your system unbootable. So be careful. In fact, before you attempt to make any changes of any kind, be sure that you have a recent Emergency Disk created using the RDISK/S command. THIS IS CRITICAL TO REMEMBER - REGEDT32 can make your system unusable!

Okay, that said, using REGEDT32 is one easy way to modify system parameters. Sometimes it is the only way to modify a parameter.

There are literally thousands of "hacks" to the registry. Many are settable via program or control panel interfaces - in these instances use the program or panel. Others should not be touched except by experts.

It's a good general rule to stay away from the registry unless you have a valid reason for being there. It's too easy to damage your system. Before you being editing, see if there are some software products that let you modify the more useful parameters without directly putting your registry at risk. Some of these programs are listed below.

Tweaki

Good little product which lets you change lots of interesting parameters. I especially liked the ability to move the history, favorites and other folders to another disk.

All right, you've updated your emergency disk and you cannot find a third party product which lets you do what you need to do. Now you can go ahead and update your registry.

Here's some advice which will help you.

1. Know your source. In other words, be sure you can trust the source of your registry hack. In general, Microsoft is pretty trustworthy as are the sites listed under Resources below. I would be careful about installing registry tweaks from hacker sites, however, as they are often poorly tested and do not product the desired results (and there is always the worry about the hacker's motivations for giving you something).
2. Try not to work from faxed copies as they can be hard to read.
3. Make sure you know the difference between zero and the letter O.
4. Double check everything before and after you do anything.
5. I like to keep a journal in a notebook of all of the changes that I've made, before and after values and reasons for changing. That way if my system suddenly starts doing strange things or performs badly I can look at what I did last and try backing it out (this saves a possible registry restore from the emergency disk).

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