Registry Editor

You require only registry editor to make the changes. One provided with Microsoft will suffice the need, but you may use anyone you like.

Here the race begins.....

Starting the Registry Editor

First method is to type REGEDIT in the Run dialog Box and Hit Enter to invoke Registry Editor.
Seconnd Method is to Manually start Registry Editor from C:\Windows\Regedit.exe

You can run your registry editor of your choice by clicking the executable icon at its installed location.

Look and Feel of Registry Editor

It consists of a window divided in two panes left and right with My Computer on the top in left pane and some values in the right pane.

Left pane data is called the Key and Right Pane data is called the Value.

Every key has some values associated with it and some keys also have some subkeys associated with them. Values can be accessed by clicking in the right pane values and can be modified by double clicking them or select modify from the context menu(Menu which appears when you right click it).

Similarly you can access any subkey by double clicking its Key or selecting Expand from the context Menu.
In order to delete any Key press delete or select Delete from Context Menu and same for the values.

Basics of Values

As told earlier Values are the data seen in right pane which have three basic properties:-

Name :- A unique Name in that key which makes is used to refer to a particular property.

Type :- Type of Value it can hole or like the Data Type in any Programming Language.

Data :- The value currently it is holding, just like the value of a variable.

Any Particular Entry must be of one of the following five Type:-

String Value

Binary Value

DWORD Value

Multi String

Expandable String Value

About Right Pane

At the top of all the Keys lies My Computer which is the Super Key for all the Keys and under My Computer there are five Sub Keys and all the references in registry starts from these Keys under My Computer. They hold information regarding Particular area. Five sub keys under My Computer are:-

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT:- It has the information regarding which application to launch on encountering a particular exetension.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER:- Settings related to current user. Only settings different from the default one are shown here.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE:- Hardware related settings and Software specific settings.

HKEY_USERS:- If you are an Administrator then you can see this hive listing different users settings.

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG:- Current Hardware configuration on which the system is running.

How to make changes

Locate the registry you want to edit by scrolling successivly until you reach there. Create any non-existing Key. Then create or Alter the value of required registry.

Create a Reg file which will scroll automatically to the desired location and make changes. For more information see creating .REG file.