What Will The Windows 7 Registry Look Like?

Paul Watson, PC Technician

Friday, August 7th 2009

The Windows Registry Won't Be Going Away Anytime Soon

If you’re anxiously awaiting the release of Windows 7, you might wonder, with all the grief a Windows registry can cause, whether Microsoft has decided to retire the registry concept. The answer, in a single word, is “no.” The Windows 7 registry is alive and well and is likely to be a part of future Windows releases.

Why The Windows Registry Won’t Go Away

The registry is a database of information that the OS uses to interact with applications and vice versa. You’re likely to see a Windows registry in future versions if for no other reason than there’s nothing in the Windows design to replace the registry.

For users of Microsoft Vista, I don’t believe the switch to Windows 7 will be as dramatic as one might imagine. Microsoft isn’t going for flash on Windows 7. Instead, it’s aiming to improve stability, reliability and usability. Windows 7 is more likely to be what Vista should have been, and the registry will operate similarly.

There are a lot of nice things about Vista that will be retained in Windows 7. The adoption rate of Windows 7 remains to be seen, but users aren’t likely to run into the same issues that they did with Windows 7. Given that the registry is still part of the mix, one could hope that Microsoft (and the application writers) will do a better job of cleaning the registry when a program is uninstalled.

Right now, users have a few choices when it comes to cleaning up what misbehaving uninstallers leave behind. Most users “leave well enough alone” and trust that the computer will understand that a program that is no longer installed doesn’t need the registry entries that got left behind. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. The computer doesn’t have the intelligence to know what’s needed and what’s not needed, so it follows all of the instructions it finds in the registry, even to its own detriment.

A second option is to edit the registry manually. This works only if you know what you’re looking for and know where to find it. It also helps to be a very accurate typist. With the registry, there is no opportunity to take back what you’ve done, and there’s no automatic mechanism to revert to the last good state. Changes take effect instantly, and you get what you typed in whether you like it or not!

Lastly, users can use a registry cleaner like RegCure, which offers a sane alternative to doing nothing or manually editing the registry. RegCure is designed to seek out the leftovers, orphans and zombies that clog up the registry and slow down your computer.

Photo Credit: Pillowhead Designs, via Flickr