What Is The Windows Registry; How Are Computer Files Named - McAfee UNINSTALLER 6.0 User Manual

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About Windows 98

What is the Windows Registry?

The Registry is a database that stores system and application configuration

information. The database file format protects system and application

information from uninformed tampering, and ensures that information is

stored according to specific and well-defined standards so that it can be

accessed reliably by applications.

Registry data is stored in a file called System.dat. It can be viewed or edited by

the Registry editor, which is called Regedit.exe. The Registry editor is not

meant for casual use. You can seriously damage your computer system if you

edit the Registry. To examine important Registry entries safely, use the

UnInstaller PowerClean feature.

Some applications, especially older applications, do not remove all of their

entries from the Registry when you use Windows Add/Remove Programs to

get rid of an them.

UnInstaller cleans up the Registry and gets rid of unconnected .INI files either

when you use the Remove wizard to uninstall an application, or when you run

the QuickClean wizard to get rid of junk files and unconnected Registry

entries.

All of the files on your computer have names that the operating system uses to

keep track of them.

In DOS and Windows 3.1 and earlier, all file names have to meet the

eight-dot-three file-name convention. This convention specifies that the first

part of the file name can have as many as eight characters. These characters are

followed by a dot, or period. Then the second part of the file name, which can

have as many as three characters, follows the dot. For example, a file might be

called Mydoc.txt, but it could not be called Mydocument.txtfile.

In Windows 98 and Windows NT, files can have much longer names, names

that describe them better so that you can see immediately what the file

contains or does. You can name a file Gas Mileage.xls, or Acme Computer

Let.doc.

Occasionally, however, you might have an application that does not use the

long file names. Then you will see a truncated version of the long file name,

such as Gasmil~1.xls. If you have many such applications, you might still

prefer to use the eight-dot-three convention for file names.

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