Why Doesn’t Microsoft Dump the Registry?

The registry is freely accessible by application installers (not to mention knowledgeable users). There are parts of the registry that Microsoft conceals or keeps read-only, and other parts that are automatically restored at start up. It's not "just a database", it's an active part of the Windows OS infrastructure that works independently and in conjunction with the Windows file system.

Fun fact: the registry was designed to replace .ini files. Also, active directory group policies are the registry

Unfortunately, when you uninstall a program, it doesn't always remove all its data from the registry

It would be nice to have an "undo" feature on the regedit menu. There are third party tools that probably offer that feature, and other registry features (such as backing up the registry, etc). But an undo option, I would think, would not be difficult for Microsoft to include.

And, in a somewhat related thought, why do Windows apps have to store program files in different places ? Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData, AppData, etc ? I'm not sure that I would call the DOS days as the "good old days", but if you wanted to move your program files, you just moved them. Today, if you even think about it, something will break. The worst part is that some, such as certain email programs, will store part of your data in one location, and other parts elsewhere. I don't always want to backup my entire drive, but if I don't, I might miss something important like my contacts which might be in Appdata.

I have had my Registries get corrupted. So much so that they ended up with entries, keys and values with random numbers and characters where the system becomes so unstable I had to do a clean re-install of the system and all programs I was using. The problem with it is when it does get corrupted the whole system is affected. When an INI get corrupted only one program get affected and then we know what corrupted it. Especially if it happens more than once. And we only have to fix that program not the entire system. No, it is not a sophisticated DB it is a crappy simple DB that is prone to errors and corruption that can not clean itself of data that is no longer needed thus gets extremely bloated. Did I mention that it has multiple duplicate Entries that bloat that data even more.

The Registry came when Microsoft bought Digital's VMS as that company was going bankrupt. In VMS it was called the "verb table", and it was a way to start programs from the command line and pass parameters. It was pretty scary changing the verbs, you culd crash the machine with one tiny typo. Sound familiar?

I used the CCleaner registry cleaner function about 12 years ago. It deleted a key that was vital to my OS. I paid an IT guy to find the issue and fix my computer. NEVER use any registry cleaner. I've been told that a fragmented registry will not slow your computer down. Leave the darn thing alone!!!

You should not use registry cleaners. Even Microsoft does not recommend using registry cleaners

As a Linux user, I haven't seen registery for x numbers of years now. Yeah, it does make certain things easier or easier to fix. But sometimes it gets bloated too much often

In other systems, each program gets its own directory. There it saves the settings in an .ini file. If the program does not work, the entire directory can be deleted and the program reinstalled. that then solves all problems.

I haven't had a problem with the registry since Win98. And I've been programming professionally since before MS-DOS was invented.

I worked on an old windows program that used the registry to store various user settings. Then had to do major overhauls when windows started applying security to the registry. Had to move a lot of settings to the User hive rather than the root hive. I guess the fault of our developers not understanding the purpose of the various hives but when MS had no security to prevent us misusing it, I don't blame my forbearers too much. But the real mess was realizing that windows kept separate registry values for 32 bit and 64 bit programs,

Leo, I just wanted to say, your videos are amazing and have helped me out with a lot of issues and questions I've had in my upgrade journey from an 11-year old Windows 7 PC to the new Windows 11 system I'm using now. Your style of speaking and your way of explaining things is so intelligent, and understanding, and patient. Have you ever considered doing narration for audio books, like tech manuals or even novels? You have the perfect voice for it! Anyways, thanks again, and I'm really glad I found your channel!

The registry was first introduced in Windows 3.11, but then fully implemented in Windows 95

All the registry does is provide a typed alternate namespace for storage. As an application programmer, if I wanted to store one setting per file, it would have the same fine grained access control that the registry does. Being typed, it does provide for some small amount of data validation (e.g., you can't store an arbitrary string in a DWORD key, it must be a number). It's just a royal pain in the patoot because instead of just copying files to back something up, now ya gotta have separate routines to go query the registry and save that too. The same, BTW, applies to gconf. I don't think it's the registry per se which enables being able to log in anywhere and have "all" your settings follow you, it's just that Microsoft has chosen to have that happen automatically with roaming profiles. You could accomplish similar things with other OSes, just that by default that's not what happens. A similar but not quite identical effect can be had by NFS mounting home directories.

As a home Mac user, I've never had a single problem with the Mac's registry, and my Mac does all the same daily chores that my Win PC at work does. (Ya, I know Macs don't do gaming, but my Xbox scratches that itch just fine, lol). So Apple seems to have figured out how to reliably store program settings and data, why can't Microsoft? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Been using Windows since version 3.0 and I cannot remember the last time I had a problem with the Registry. I suspect any issues that people have are down to rogue software using the Registry erroneously.

Unifying all of the operating system data and application data in a single place was a colossally stupid idea. I don't use the registry in my applications.

Coming from Unix, when I first encountered Windows this was exactly my question. The most idiotic single point of failure, obviously completely unnecessary since other OSs don't use it. Incompetence.