What’s the purpose of the Windows registry?
The purpose of the Windows registry is to gather in one place all the configuration information about Windows. Before the Windows registry was introduced in Windows 95, configuration information used to be stored in .INI files and since each application/hardware component used many .INI files, which were scattered in many directories, it was next to impossible to keep track of all the changes to configuration, user preferences, etc., which frequently resulted to conflicts and system errors. Because of that it was decided that all the configuration information about Windows itself, the hardware, software, and user preferences must be gathered in one place to ease administration. However, the Windows registry is such a complex structure and when there is a problem in it, this leads to many problems and can render the whole system useless.
