Registry Finder

Registry Finder is an improved replacement for the built-in Windows registry editor. It has many features that makes working with registry more productive, comfortable and safe, including:

• Cut/Copy/Paste keys and/or values.
• Undo and redo registry modifications (except changing permissions).
• Multiple local and remote registry windows.
• Fast, non blocking search.
• Whole search results are displayed in a list.
• Multiple search results window.
• Ability to search within previous search results narrowing down your search scope.
• Ability to search for hidden keys.

Registry Finder allows you to browse the local registry; create, delete, rename keys and values; modify values as its natural data type (string, multistring, DWORD) or as a binary data. It is allowed to open multiple Registry windows. Next time you start Registry Finder, those windows will be reopened on the same keys as before.

The Find operation is efficient and quick. All found items are displayed in a separate window as a list. Each line represents a single match with the search criteria. The icon shows where the match occurred: key name, value name or value data. Matched text is highlighted with red.
You can jump to any found item in the Registry window or edit/delete items right in the Find Results window.
Items in the Find Results window can be saved to file in .reg or .txt format. In latter case, items are separated by tabulator. It allows easy data importing and analyzing in other programs, such as Microsoft Excel.

With the Replace feature you can easily replace all or particular occurrences of one string with another. The replacement is performed only in items that are in the Find Results window. In the Replace dialog you specify either all items or just selected ones. After replacement is done, items in the window are updated. If some item do not match the search criteria any more it still remains in the list.

All operations that alter the registry including deletion and replacement can be undone and redone. The operations are listed in the History window. To open it, click View|History in the main menu. The last performed operation is marked with a yellow arrow.

Full name of the key can be copied to clipboard.

Registry Finder can be used without installation. Just download archive with binaries, unpack it into any folder on HDD or USB drive and start the executable. The utility does not store any of its data in the registry. It stores settings in the RegistryFinder.config file located in the same folder as the executable.

Another option is to download and run the installer. It contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of binaries, so you do not need to choose. The installer can deploy Registry Finder either in Normal mode or in Portable mode. The later just unpacks binaries into the folder you specify. The Normal mode performs standard things - unpack binaries, create shortcut in the Start Menu, create a desktop icon and make uninstallation entry in the Control Panel. One little difference is that in Normal mode the config file is stored in another place. Specifically, in the %APPDATA%\RegistryFinder folder.

Unlike Windows registry editor, by default, Registry Finder runs with limited privileges even when you are an administrator. This is more secure, but may cause Access denied errors when you're attempting to do some changes. To avoid such errors you should launch Registry Finder with elevated privileges.

Registry Finder allows you to restart himself as admin through the File | Restart as Administrator menu. (This menu is absent if Registry Finder already running as admin.)

If you want to always launch as admin, you can create shortcut and set the Run as administrator option (right click the shortcut, select Properties, click Advanced).

When Registry Finder is running as administrator, the window title contains the word "Administrator", for example: Registry Finder - Administrator - [Local Registry].

Registry Finder automatically uses dark theme when you turn on dark mode in Windows. (Head to Settings > Personalization > Colors. Select the "Dark" option under the "Choose your app mode" section.) Dark mode is available only in Windows 10 so, in turn, the dark theme in Registry Finder is available only in Windows 10.

It is possible to turn off dark theme when Windows dark mode is on through the config file.
After the first run, Registry Finder creates the following entry:

<ForceLightMode>false</ForceLightMode>

<ForceLightMode>true</ForceLightMode>

I could not make some UI elements to be dark (some due to technical issues, some due to I was too focused on the main window and did not noticed them on time). This include the status bar in the main window, drop-down list in all combo boxes, data controls in the Find dialog, the main control in the Modify Binary dialog, tabs in the Properties dialog, the links list in the Edit Favorite dialog.
The grayscale icons that Registry Finder uses by default are not good with the dark theme. I recommend to use custom toolbar icons.
If you notice other incompleteness or issues, don't hesitate to contact me.

To facilitate importing .reg files with Registry Finder you can add a command to Windows Explorer's context menu for .reg files.

To do so, just execute the ContextMenu-Add.bat file. To remove the command, execute the ContextMenu-Remove.bat file.

Also, you can make Registry Finder, instead of regedit, to perform import when you double-click a .reg file: execute RegFileAssoc-Add.bat. RegFileAssoc-Remove.bat restores import with regedit.

Note. You must execute files with administrator rights, otherwise you'll get the Access denied error.

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\regedit.exe" /v "Debugger" /t REG_SZ /d "\"REGISTRY_FINDER_DIR\RegistryFinder.exe\" -z" /f

Note. This is a global setting that affects all users regardless of how they start regedit (for example, through a command line, the Run dialog or by double clicking a .reg file). If you are using Registry Finder in portable mode, make sure that the folder where Registry Finder resides is accessible to any user. Make sure you revert the changes before deleting Registry Finder, otherwise regedit cannot be started. In normal mode, uninstaller will revert the changes for you.

RegistryFinder --regedit

In that case, Registry Finder is fully functional except that the undo history and application settings are not saved (so called No-Save mode). On startup, appropriate message is shown and the status bar contains a yellow triangle sign.

The pop-up message can be suppressed by manually editing the RegistryFinder.config file. Add the following line at the end of the file:

<WarnStoreReadOnly>false</WarnStoreReadOnly>

Because of the variety of constructions of regular expressions I do not try to describe even the most basic ones here. Instead, I recommend finding relevant information on the Internet. For example, an excellent starting point to learn regular expressions is regular-expressions.info. Another useful resource is regex101.com which is a tool for testing regular expressions.

To search for regular expressions, you have to enable the "Use regular expressions" option in the Find dialog.

Registry Finder uses the Boost.Regex library. It utilizes the Perl regular expression syntax. See the documentation is you need details.

1. Start MakeLang.exe with the -i parameter:

   MakeLang -i

   That creates RegistryFinder_lang.ini file containing all strings used in Registry Finder UI.
2. Open the created language ini file in Notepad or in any other text editor.
3. Translate all string entries to the desired language and save the file.

   Optionally, you can add your name and/or a link to your Web site. This is the "1018=TranslationAuthor" entry under the "[Dialog_#100]" section. TranslationAuthor must be in the form of the <a> HTML tag. For example,

   1018=<a href="www.johnsmith.com">John Smith</a>

   This information is shown in the About box.

4. Start Registry Finder. It automatically invokes MakeLang with the -d parameter to create the RegistryFinder_lang.dll file containing all translated resources in binary form.

   If you want to run Registry Finder without the translation, rename the language ini and dll files, or move it to another folder.

Here you can find some clarifications to certain lines in the language file.

If you translate Registry Finder into you language, please send me the language ini file and I will share it with other people. Alternatively, you can make a pull request in the translations repository.

• An icon set from Martin

  
  

• An icon set from SirTazofMania

  
  

• An icon set from Joe P. - rework of SirTazofMania's icons in Windows 11 style

  
  

• An icon set from Spitfire XIV

  
  

• An icon set from Marcio de Andrade

  
  

• An icon set from Frédéric Bellec

  
  

• An icon set from amshevch

  
  

• An icon set from Slim08

  
  

To install a custom icon set, just download an archive and unpack it to the "res" folder located in

• For portable mode, the program's folder.
• For normal installation mode, %APPDATA%\RegistryFinder.

For details on how to create custom toolbar icons, see here.

When Registry Finder encounters an unexpected error it generates crash report and asks you to send it to the developer.

This report contains information essential to investigate and fix the problem. So please prefer pressing the Send report button. If you encounter crash multiple times, do not hesitate to send report two or three times - it is possible, the latter contain slightly different information not available in the former. Press the Close the program button when you believe you already reported the same problem several times.

Please note that due to lack of time, I analyze reports from the latest version only.

If you have any problem, suggestion, comment, or you found a bug in Registry Finder, please send a message to feedback@registry-finder.com or create a topic at GoogleGroup forum.

Registry Finder will be developed further, so your feedback is greatly appreciated!