Microsoft® Windows Server 2003: Administrator’s Companion

Understanding the Registry’s Structure

In a file system, the root objects are disks, which contain folders and files. A single folder can contain an arbitrary number of other folders and files; each folder or file has a name. By combining the names of the folders that enclose a file, you can construct a path that unambiguously names only one file on the disk, so that C:\Windows\Mapi32.dll and C:\Winnt\Mapi32.dll are completely separate files, for example.

The registry is organized much like a file system, except that the vocabulary needed to describe it is somewhat different. At the root of the registry structure are the root keys (likened to a disk in a file system). Each root key contains several subkeys (folders); in turn, these subkeys contain ...