Search and find keys in the Windows registry faster using RegScanner

Posted on March 10, 2008 at 6:04 am

Have you ever had to search through the Windows registry to find some esoteric key? If you’re a tech person like myself, you’ve probably modified a bunch of keys in your time, but don’t you hate how hard it is to search the registry? It’s the only search I have ever come across where you don’t get a list of items that match your search that you can then sort through yourself.

Instead, you have to keep pressing F3 and browsing through many useless keys before you find the one you’re looking for. At least it would be nice if you could search for registry keys like you search for files and folders in Windows.

Luckily, there’s a free program called RegScanner that allows to search the Windows registry in a much more advanced fashion! It allows you to search for keys using a good number of filters and it presents all matching keys to you in a list format, that you can then sort by columns.

RegScanner has several key advantages over the built-in search and find option in Windows:

RegScanner will display the results as a list, so you don’t have to keep pressing F3 to go to the next value
RegScanner can also find Registry values by data length, value type (REG_SZ, REG_DWORD, etc), and by modified date of the key, in addition to the standard string search already in RegEdit
RegScanner can find a unicode string that is stored inside of a binary value.
RegScanner allows you to search in case sensitive mode
While searching the registry, RegScanner displays the current scanned registry key, instead of just displaying “Searching the registry” like RegEdit does.

The cool thing about RegScanner is that it is a standalone executable and therefore requires no installation in order to run! just download it and run the RegScanner.exe file.

There are some interesting ways to use RegScanner that can make it very easy to find something you’re looking for. For example, if you want to view all of the registry keys that are under a specific key, you would choose “Registry items contains any value” in the Matching combo box, you would uncheck the “Scan the following base keys” option and you would choose the key you wanted to examine from the top combo box called Base Key (i.e. HKLM\Software \Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer).

You can also search for keys that have been modified during a specified time period, i.e. the last few hours or last few days, etc. So if you just installed a program and you want to see all of the different registry keys effected, you would select “Add entry for each found key” and choose “Add only keys” and then check the box for “Display only keys that their modified time is within the following range.”

You can also use the program to search the registry of a remote computer, but in order to do so, you’ll need to have the login information for an Administrator account.

Overall, it’s a great program for anyone who finds themselves constantly looking for data in the Windows Registry! Need to find your Windows XP product key in the registry? You could try RegScanner! Enjoy! Source Tech[dot]Blog

[tags]windows registry search, find windows xp key in registry, find windows xp registry, windows registry search replace, search the windows registry[/tags]

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Comments

5 Responses to “Search and find keys in the Windows registry faster using RegScanner”

Computing Tips said on : March 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

I have been looking for a program like this for ages, I have to search through the registry almost daily in my computer suppport job, this will come in very hand

akishore said on : March 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

Hi, I feed you! I was so happy to see this program when I first read about it! It’s so much easier to search for registry keys in Windows using RegScanner.

Charles Brader said on : March 12th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

This looks like a great tool to have. This would help to narrow down problems with old or unused registry entries, which are leftover from uninstalling programs in Windows. I can see where it would also help assisting in the removal of registry entries from spyware and viruses.

Great post!

narciso alcalde h said on : May 10th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

instalacion de microsoft windows xp profesional completo agradesco por este gesto de servicio virtual y a la vez un apoyo que brindan a los que ignoramos la ciencia, por lugares alejados..hasta pronto racias

Best posts on Online Tech Tips from March 2008 Says:

[...] Search and find keys in the Windows registry faster using RegScanner Have you ever had to search through the Windows registry to find some esoteric key? If you’re a tech person like myself, you’ve probably modified a bunch of keys in your time, but don’t you hate how hard it is to search the registry? [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 am