As with other internal components in Windows, Microsoft has added a number of features over the years to make the registry both more reliable and more secure. The Varonis agent, for example, stores certain low-level configuration settings as registry values. Third-party developers also frequently make use of the registry, although there is no requirement to do so. While the implementation has changed over time, every version of Windows since 3.1 has included a registry. All of these elements are organized into a hierarchical tree-like structure. Keys are roughly analogous to folders, while values are somewhat similar to individual files. Hives are a collection of keys and are generally built around a unifying concept like a particular user or computer. The registry consists of hives, keys, and values. It was introduced in 1992 to replace the messy practice of using separate configuration files for each user and application on the machine. The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database of settings used by Windows components, drivers, and applications. How to Identify Broken Registry Items + Their Cause If you’re wondering ‘how to repair broken registry items’, read through the rest of this guide to learn what a broken registry item is, what symptoms it may cause, and how to fix it. Modern flavors of Windows tend to do a good job of maintaining the registry on their own, but there may still be some limited circumstances where broken registry items can cause issues.

Broken Registry Items have been the thorn in many an IT admin’s side almost since the day Microsoft introduced the Registry concept in Windows 3.1.

Broken registry items