Inside the Windows Vista Registry

Inside the Windows Vista Registry  

What is Inside the Windows Vista Registry?

The registry of your Vista PC is a central hierarchical database comprising more than 15,000 keys and 35,000 values. The basic structure of the Vista registry is made up of five root keys—HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR),  HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU),  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM),  HKEY_USERS (HKU), and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG (HKCC).

Out of these, the HKLM and HKU are the real root keys and the HKCR, HKLM, and HKCC are user-specific keys comprising only that information which is relevant for the currently logged on user.

All information related to the hardware and software installed on your PC is stored in the HKLM key and information on all user profiles configured on your PC is stored in the HKU key.

The subtree of the HKCR key contains information concerning file types, file extensions, prefixes of URL protocols, and registered classes. Information in the HKCR key is extracted from the following two keys—HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes and HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes. If the same information is in both the keys, it is there in the HKCR and if there is a conflict between the entries in both the keys, then only the information in the HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes is displayed in HKCR.

The HKCU subtree contains user profiles of the currently logged on user. Information such as desktop configuration, environment variables, printers, user folders and Control Panel settings for the current user can be found in this key. In reality, there is no actual data stored in the HKCU subtree. It just comprises a pointer to the HKU\Security ID of the current user.

The HKCC subtree comprises hardware configuration information of the current user. This key also does not contain any data of its own. It just includes pointers to the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles subkey.

Vista Registry Problems

As you work on your PC, these registry keys start filling up with new entries. Although entries in the registry are required to carry out different operations on your PC, at times, some unwanted information also creeps into it. This unwanted information causes the registry to bloat. A large and bloated registry easily gets damaged, and in turn, slows down your Vista computer and generates frequent computer errors.

To prevent Vista registry problems and maintain a healthy, high performance PC, it is important for you to regularly scan the Vista registry for unwanted, outdated, and incorrect information and remove it.

You can perform this easily with the help of a Windows Vista registry cleaner tool. There is no specific registry tool available within the Windows Vista operating system, therefore, to perform registry repair you will have to search for an appropriate tool on the Internet and download it to your system. Using a Vista registry cleaner tool you can perform the following registry maintenance tasks: