YOU’LL NEED THIS
TOUR REGISTRY EDITOR
REGISTRY 101
REGEDIT ALTERNATIVES
TIP OF THE MONTH
WINDOWS 11 plus a Registry backup—use System Restore or a drive image tool. Optional extra: third-party Registry editor, such as O&O Registry Editor.
The Registry consists of a series of files known as ‘hives’, stored in two separate locations: Windows > System32 > Config for system-wide settings, and your personal User folder for settings associated with your user account.
If you plan to spend time tweaking Registry keys, you may become frustrated at some of Registry Editor’s drawbacks.
1. ADDRESS BAR
Each hive consists of a different set of preferences and configuration data—for example, system-wide software settings are stored in a file called SOFTWARE. This information is organized into sub-folders or ‘keys’. Each key contains one or more ‘values’ with associated ‘value data’, which are the configuration settings for your PC.
Spying an opportunity to fill those missing gaps, several third-party Registry editing tools have emerged.
TEMPORARY FILE DELETE
This recent addition to Registry Editor allows you to type or paste in Registry addresses to quickly jump to the specified subkey.
There are numerous types of value, depending on the data they contain. The most common include REG_ DWORD values, which contain binary or hexadecimal numbers in 32- bit format (the 64-bit equivalent is REG_ QWORD), and REG_SZ, which contains text such as drive labels, context-menu options, or the path to a particular folder or file on your hard drive.
One of the highest-rated is O&O RegEditor (www. oo-software.com/en/ooregeditor), a freeware portable editor. Download the 1MB zip file and extract its contents, then double-click OORegEdt.exe to launch it. You’ll be prompted to make the app the default for opening .REG files—click ‘No’ for now until you’re sure it’s right for you.
If it feels as though your PC is getting a little sluggish, clearing temporar y files can help to make things run faster and smoother. Press ‘Windows + R’ to open up the run application, then search ‘temp’ and then hit OK. This will open up a load of temporar y files, most of which will be unnecessar y. To clear all of these files, press ‘CTRL + A’ and then hit delete. Hopefully, this will help speed your computer up a little.