Overview of the Windows NT Registry

System administrators must meet an enormous challenge in managing hardware, operating systems, and applications on personal computers. In Windows NT, the Registry helps simplify the support burden by providing a secure, unified database that stores configuration data in a hierarchical form, so that system administrators can easily provide local or remote support, using the administrative tools in Windows NT.

This part of the Windows NT Resource Guide describes the Registry and shows how to use the information in the Registry for troubleshooting and configuration maintenance.

• This chapter presents background information about the structure and contents of the Registry.
• Chapter 11, "The Registry Editor and Registry Administration," provides details about using Registry Editor for viewing and editing Registry entries.
• Chapter 12, "Configuration Management and the Registry," provides specific problem-solving techniques using the Registry.
• Chapter 13, "Initialization Files and the Registry," describes how Windows NT uses files such as WIN.INI and CONFIG.SYS and how this information is mapped to the Registry.
• Chapter 14, "Registry Value Entries," lists the Registry values that can be used for tuning and troubleshooting the network, system components, and the user environment.

Caution

Wherever possible, use the administrative tools such as Control Panel and User Manager to make configuration changes, rather than using Registry Editor. Using the administrative tools is safer because these applications know how to properly store values in the Registry. If you make errors while changing values with Registry Editor, you will not be warned, because Registry Editor does not understand or recognize errors in syntax or other semantics.