Monthly Archives: July 2009

Our website contains many tutorials that require editing the Windows Registry. Rather than summarizing the process in every article, I thought it might be better to make a more in-depth exploration separately. In this tutorial, I will explain what the Windows Registry is, how to edit its contents and the risks associated with doing so.

In the early days of Windows, applications would often store their configuration data in text documents called initialization files. Typically, these files would use an extension like .ini, .txt, .cfg, etc. One of the major problems with this particular system was that with the sheer number of applications installed, the .ini files would become scattered across the file system, making them difficult to track. After the release of Windows 95, in an effort to further standardize and manage configuration for applications and Windows, Microsoft encouraged software developers to use the Windows Registry as an alternative to INI files for storing configuration data. In the years that followed, the Windows Registry became the standard repository for application settings. Continue reading →

On Windows XP, it is possible to hide user accounts from both the Welcome Screen and the User Accounts control panel. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how. I’m sure people have various reasons for wanting to do this, so here we go. Continue reading →