Windows Me Annoyances

Search the Registry Effectively

The Registry Editor has a simple search feature, allowing you to search through all the keys and values for text. Just select Find from the Registry Editor’s Edit menu, type the desired text, and click Find Next. Because the Registry can become quite large and have a wide variety of settings and information, it is important to learn to search effectively, so you don’t miss anything or waste a lot of time wading through irrelevant results. Additionally, the Registry Editor doesn’t have a search-and-replace feature, so doing something as simple as changing every occurrence of c:\program files to d:\program files can be a monumental chore. Here are some tips that may help:

• Make sure that all three options in the Find window’s Look at section are checked, unless you know specifically that what you’re looking for is solely a Key, Value (value name), or Data (value contents). You’ll also usually want the Match whole string only option turned off.

• Many folder names in the Registry are stored in both long and short versions. For example, say you want to move your Program Files folder from one drive to another (see Section 4.2.1 in Chapter 4 for more information). When you install Windows, any settings pertaining to this folder may be stored in the Registry as c:\Program Files or c:\Progra~1. Make sure you search for both.

• If you’re searching the Registry for both Program Files and Progra~1, you may want to just search for progra, which will trigger both variations. ...