This should go without saying, but it bears a reminder. 3: Pay close attention to what you are doing Even more important, exporting branches from the registry allows you to become familiar with how registry keys work WITHOUT making changes to the working registry. Make your changes to that registry branch and then import it back into the registry.
This is similar to backing up your registry, but by exporting a single branch, you can then open it in Notepad to examine its contents. One of the best ways you can play it safe is to always export a particular key (or branch) before you make any edits. To back up from within Regedit, just open it up, select the root key (the one containing all your registry subkeys), click File > Export, and provide a name and a location to save the file. But no matter how you do it, make sure you create a backup any time you're about to make change. There are plenty of tools that can help you do this or you can use the built-in Regedit tool. No matter what you are about to do in the registry, you should back it up.
Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.
To help prevent any registry disasters, here are five tips to keep in mind when considering an edit of the registry.
So any user who attempts to edit the registry needs to do so with caution.
One wrong edit, in the wrong entry, can render a Windows machine unusable or worse - unbootable. To use the GetChildSubKeys method and retrieve all sub keys of a particular key, you can write the following code.The Windows registry is a powerful tool that can be used to fix severe problems.
Write your custom exception handling code here String temp = registryKey.GetSubKeyNames() The following code snippet illustrates how this can be achieved. You can also retrieve all the sub keys of a particular key using the GetSubKeyNames method of the RegistryKey class. I leave it to you to modify the above code to incorporate this change. You may want to check if the sub key exists before you attempt to delete it – that way the changes of exceptions being thrown are minimal. The above method returns true if deletion of the sub key is a success, false otherwise. The following code listing illustrates how you can do this. You can also delete a sub key using the DeleteSubKey static method. String subKey = str = ReadSubKeyValue(subKey, "Key 1") Here's how you can call the ReadSubKeyValue method. The ReadSubKeyValue method accepts a subkey and a key as a parameter and returns the value out of it. Str = registryKey.GetValue(key).ToString() Using (RegistryKey registryKey = (subKey)) Static string ReadSubKeyValue(string subKey, string key) The following method can be used to read a value from a sub key. The following code snippet shows how you can create a new sub key named IDG and store key - values inside it. To create a new sub key you can take advantage of the CreateSubKey method as shown CreateSubKey method creates a new sub key and returns it - the return type is RegistryKey. In this section we will explore how we can create, read or delete subkeys from the Windows Registry using C#. To work with the Windows Registry using C#, you can take advantage of the Registry class in the Microsoft.Win32 namespace. Note that a key can have sub keys - much the same way a folder can contain sub folders inside it. You can consider registry keys are folders in your windows system. You can programmatically read, write, and delete keys, sub keys and values from the Windows Registry. You are now safe to manipulate your registry database programmatically. Your registry information will be saved in a. Select a particular branch or the “All” option to export the entire registry information.Type Regedit and press Enter to invoke the Windows Registry Editor.You can create a backup of your Windows Registry by following these steps. It is advisable to back-up your registry before you make any changes so that you can revert those changes back if need be. Note that you should be extra careful when manipulating the Windows Registry. Information on installed programs in your system.