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The registry grew out of a number of control files and databases that existed in previous versions of Windows, traveling a logical road to today’s incarnation of the way Windows Server 2003 stores settings.

Microsoft Windows 3.1, which was the first widely used version of Windows (especially in business), used three file types to define a computer’s hardware and application software for the operating system. Two of the file types were initialization files, which have the extension .ini, and the third file type was a registration database. Among the initialization files (.ini files) were files included in Windows, and a bunch of private .ini files from application software.

Windows 3.1xused six .ini files to load and control the Windows environment (control.ini, progman.ini, protocol.ini, system.ini, win.ini, and winfile.ini).

The win.ini file was the primary location for information pertaining to the software configuration of the operating system, along with any specific system-wide information added by application software. Because every application made changes to win.ini (usually with the attitude that it was the only application installed on the computer), this .ini file usually grew very large, very fast. The size caused problems when it exceeded 64KB. The operating system permitted win.ini to grow beyond 64KB (and didn’t bother to inform the user that this limit had been reached) even though any entry beyond that 64KB boundary was ignored. When applications added entries to the top sections of the win.ini file, information at the bottom of the file was pushed beyond the initialization boundary, and that information wasn’t implemented. Applications that expected these lost entries to be initialized failed, either totally or by losing functionality. In an attempt to prevent

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this problem, Microsoft recommended that application developers store application- specific information in private .ini files that pertained only to their application. While this helped, many application developers continued to put large amounts of information in the win.ini file.

The system.ini file served as the primary repository for system information about the hardware installed in the computer, pointing the operating system to hardware and related software components (device drivers, shells, and so forth).

The progman.ini file contained the initialization settings for the Windows Program Manager, and winfile.ini contained the settings for the Windows File Manager. The absence of these files wouldn’t prevent Windows from running (which is not the case with system.ini or win.ini), but the default configuration for the applications they control were loaded, absent any customizations made by the user.

The protocol.ini file, which first appeared with the Windows for Workgroups version of Windows 3.1x, held initialization information for Windows networking.

Private initialization files were the .ini files added to the Windows directory by third- party applications installed on the system. These files contained specific information about the state of the application, including items such as screen position, the most recently used file list, and so on.

A win.ini file exists on most Windows NT/ 2000/Server 2003 systems, and its role is to support 16-bit applications.

The last file that Windows 3.1xused for system configuration was reg.dat. This was the Windows 3.1 Registration Database and is the direct predecessor of the registry. (It didn’t take long for users to shorten the nameRegistration Databasetoregistry.) This database, which contained nested structures from a single root (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT), held the information needed to maintain file extension associations and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) drag-and-drop support. Unlike .ini files, which are simple ASCII text files that youcan edit in any text editor, the reg.dat file was a binary file and came with its own editing application, the Registration Information Editor (Regedit.exe). This first registry had some serious limitations, in the form of a single hierarchy and a size limit of 64KB for the reg.dat file.

A large problem with the Windows 3.1 registry was the manner in which the operating system used it, or rather, didn’t use it. There was no particular sense of urgency about keeping the registration database up-to-date and accurate. Applications could write to it, or not. No “oversight committee” standards were built into the operating system to ensure that a software application told the registry the same thing it told its own .ini files, or the system .ini files. If software configuration, .ini files, and the registration database had matching information, it was frequently a coincidence. In addition, the communication methods to query and write to the registry were cumbersome and required quite a bit of overhead, frequently slowing down the system. Lastly, user settings didn’t exist, so multiple users on the same computer lived with the settings left behind by the last user.

When Microsoft released the first incarnation of Windows NT (NT 3.1), the registry had been made more flexible and more powerful. The 64KB limit was removed. The hierarchical structure was expanded to include multiple nested containers, and the

registry-handling code was reworked to keep performance at a high level. Remote administration was enabled, making the life of a network administrator easier. Microsoft pushed developers to use the registry for variables and settings, and even made its own programs registry-friendly.

Another significant change with the release of Windows NT 3.1 was the introduction of Regedt32. This new 32-bit registry editor displayed each subtree in its own window and provided powerful new commands such as the ability to connect to the registries of remote computers and the important ability to secure registry keys.

Windows NT 4 and Windows 95 (and later Windows 98) were released with remarkably similar registries. Both added new subtrees: HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG and HKEY_DYN_DATA.

All of these changes and improvements brought us to the registry for Windows Server 2003 (as well as Windows 2000)—the subject of this chapter.