INI configuration files that were scattered across the OS. Microsoft introduced the registry back in Windows 3.1, but it was initially used only for certain types of software. In the Windows 3.1 era, Windows applications frequently stored settings in. These groups are called “hives” because of one of the original developers of Windows NT hated bees. The registry is made up of multiple groups of keys and values like HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

The registry contains folder-like “keys” and “values” inside those keys that can contain numbers, text, or other data. When you sign out of your PC and shut down, it saves the state of the registry to the disk. When you change a program’s settings, it can change the settings in the registry. When you launch a program, it can check the registry stored in memory to find its configuration settings.

When you sign in to Windows, it loads the settings from these files into memory. But it doesn’t matter where these files are stored, because you’ll never need to touch them.

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