The Windows registry is a part of the Windows operating system that we should never touch unless we really know what we are doing, since any change can affect the behavior of the computer and cause it to stop working completely, forcing us to format the system if we do not have a backup stored.
When we talk about the Windows registry, we are talking about a hierarchical database where Windows configuration settings are stored, which was first introduced with the release of Windows 3.1. As Microsoft has been releasing new versions of Windows, it has been getting new features.
The information stored in the Windows registry is related to the hardware, the configuration options that are seen and not seen in Windows, the user’s preferences, among others, and everything is perfectly related to each other so that the operation of Windows and the programs that we have installed is always the best of all.
What happens if we modify it without knowing what we are doing? In the best case, we can find some operating problem focused on an application, a configuration option, operating problems with a certain hardware, among others.
A user with a lot of free time wanted to test the operation of the registry of a computer with Windows 10 changing all values to 0.
What happens if all registry values are changed to 0?
The YouTube channel Come on Windows, has used the application Registry Replace Tool to change all the values in the Windows registry to 0, a change that, contrary to what might be expected at first, has not been completely catastrophic for the computer.
As we can see in the video above, while the Registry Replace Tool application was doing its job, the system was functioning with apparent normality, except for the occasional operating error that it displayed. Once the process has finished, what is most striking is that it is not possible to run .exe files, the Windows executable files.
The hardware configuration options were also affected, since, as we can see in the video, the equipment was managed by the processor Intel Core i7-00800Hinstead of the Intel Core i7-11800H. After testing all the native applications installed on Windows, the only ones that seem to have not been affected by the changes in the Windows registry are Paint and WordPad.
While it is true that Microsoft Edge is able to open, when entering a URL it freezes and stops working. As we have mentioned above, this change has not been as catastrophic as it could be, however, the video has failed to do one more test.
When we make any changes to the registry, for it to come into operation, it is advisable restart the PCa reboot that this user has not done. Most likely when he proceeded to do so, the computer, in this case the virtual machine he used, would not work under any circumstances.