Once upon a time – in the distant past of the 1960’s a little-known company began the design and development of an operating system for the first personal computer (actually the fourth, but heck – who’s counting stuff like LINC, Apple 1, and Altair).    As you may know – from even more distant past development activities of mainframe computers – like the Univac and the IBM 360 – and their predecessors, the IBM 650 and the Eniac, it takes an operating system – a complex software program – to control all systemic functionality in a computer.  Again, operating systems are all composed of three elements or sub-systems – Job Management, Task Management, and Data Management. 

Job Management controls the allowance, selection, permission-to-execute and allocation of resources to organized groups of programs – called Jobs – that achieve an overall function or task-set.  Task Management controls tasks and data management controls data.   If any one of these elements is missing – well then you don’t really have an operating system…you just have stuff.

When the developers of DOS got to Job Management, they decided to leave it out – assuming that the control of access to jobs on a personal computer would take place in the mind of its owner.   Only an idiot would run something he didn’t want to, right?   Voila!  No Job Management was included in MS-DOS.  That blundering idiocy you are still paying for my friends – in the form of Viruses – for you see everything in DOS (which is still the heart or kernel of all Microsoft Operating Systems) is simply a file – of Code or Data.  If it is data it is held for control access by a running job or program; if it is Code (meaning a software program) IT EXECUTES WITHOUT ANY QUESTION AS TO ITS PERMISSION-TO-EXECUTE OR ITS VALIDITY TO EVEN BE REQUESTING IT.  That is what allows viruses to exist on your personal computer…all you need is a way to get them onto your PC (piggybacked on emails or porn files) and they will be allowed to run (as .exe programs) whenever and wherever they happen to be.  You have the founders of Microsoft to thank for that.

Meanwhile let’s answer the original question – which is – what the heck is the system registry and how it became a mess that you, the user, has to deal with?   Okay, here goes.

When, in the early 90’s it became obvious that they were going to have to deal with the issue of Job Management sooner or later – they chose Later.  This is obviously a repeat performance for these guys, right?  Okay, well they still needed to deal with the ever-growing requirement to be able to control both access parameters and all the other data controls that are necessary to both launch and properly execute and run complex applications.

They chose to create a simple file system to both record and serve these needs.  It became known as the system Registry.  While only intended for basic services at first it naturally grew and, over time, became the monster file that today is targeted by every software firm and hacker for both legitimate and illegal purposes.  MICROSOFT CORPORATION PROVIDES NO MAINTENANCE CAPABILITY FOR THIS FILE.  THEREFORE, YOU WILL HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO MAINTAIN IT – I.E CLEANSE IT OF CORRUPT, REDUNDANT, AND ERRANT ENTRIES.  Your only option for this maintenance, unless you are a qualified programmer – is to buy a product called registry software.   With it you can do a registry fix and finalize your registry repair.