“Do not try this at home” *takes computer outside*

*Thats a lotta damage*

"do not try this at home" *well school is a place with pcs*

Joe : Do not try this at home Also Joe : *tries it at his home*

When you delete it: Registry: "Mr. Win32…" Registry: "I don't feel so good"

It seems like you didn't notice the registry backup files had a filesize of 0KB, that must be the reason they didn't fix anything.

4:30 that's because you deleted the SSD / HDD drivers, and now it's using the (much) slower legacy drivers

3:28 - My first heart attack

I have accidentally overwritten Windows 7 registry with Windows 98 registry before. Had to reinstall. This was during GTA Vice City registry patch. Should have checked .reg file before executing it lol.

Windows: "I don't feel so good..."

A better way to delete the registry is to delete the files itself that contain the hives. They are located in %systemroot%\System32\Config. Other registry-specific files are %userprofile%\Ntuser.dat, which contains user-specific data and %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat, which contain per-user file associations. EDIT: After I saw that ThioJoe used the "backup" of the registry hives that are 0 KB large files to "restore" the registry, he essentialy "deleted" the registry.

ThioJoe: *Do not try this at home.* Me: _does it at school_

6:40 All of those backup files have 0KB size. I guess the installation was so fresh it didn't have a moment to actually make a proper registry backup, so there were empty files instead. And, well, you replaced registry files that still had something in them with completely empty 0KB ones, and you broke it even more. lol

What would happen if you tried to put the Recycle bin into the Recycle Bin?

I love your efforts just to show us cases. Great effort Thanks

I love that the RegBack files in the folder are just 0 KB lol

Windows registry = file system within file system.

Why do I always feel like you’re a mixture of Jacksfilms and LinusTechTips

The computer needs a doctor. CALL THE AM-BU-LANCE!

Thiojoe: Don’t try this at home Me: ok Also me: _Tries at work

5:19 YESSS which one breaks Edge?

I really love this new style of "what if" videos you are making, because its everything that I ever wondered about Windows made into an entertaining video! Please continue this and keep up the good work my man!

I have a program I got years ago (more designed for network computers) and it was called RegTool (not related to any of the virus programs or current programs of the same name) It allowed the user to search across keys and values, delete/replace globally across the registry, create/backup restore different versions of the registry and compare registries (presumably to diagnose a faulty computer I assume) My Windows 98SE had slowed down considerably over the years and I found quite quickly that uninstall does not remove many keys and values from the registry. I used this tool to search and remove them and then used a registry cleaner to mop up after. I ended up with at least half the number of keys and values and the speed was dramatically improved. It too had a disclaimer including an example someone that tried doing search and replace changing every instance of the word "Windows" with something else...the warning was "you WILL destroy Windows...count on it".

This is great. Something I'd never attempt. Glad you did it for us.

Not too bad if it breaks anything though. You can just fix it with flex tape, right?

Y’all remember when this guy made videos on how to download more ram?

"Do not try this at home" *takes computer with me into my car*

Very good videos. You pose questions that I wonder about, but that I don't have the nerve or knowledge to find out. In the process, I learn more from you about how to get the best out of my computer.

game THIOry what happens when you *delete system32 and windows registry at the same time?*

*D O W N L O A D M O R E R A M*

It would be nice if RegEdit showed which program installed which key, or, if a key was modified, what the original setting was. Also would be nice if it showed which keys were made/edited by an admin/user. And if you could search for those things specifically.

Thanks for cheering me up during times of having flu, my thio boi

Didn't know you could delete windows registry. Anways great video as always! PS you should make this a series

There's likely no significant amount of warnings for the registry editor because it's pretty hard to get to it accidentally and figures you know what you're doing.

Thanks a lot for the tutorial.

Thio Joe : DONT try this at home Me : too late

I remember I was following a tutorial on how to do something in registry and then I deleted the wrong folder that I should have and it ruined basically every executable, I somehow managed to look up the internet that very specific folder with its keys and reconstruct it. phew.

Time to delete System31, and Door Registry. What else?

ThioJoe: don’t try this at home Me: **trys it at my cousins house**

Idk why these videos make me laugh so much 😂

It was funny. I was working for a company about 15 - 20 years ago and after development getting DLLs from a repository and registering new versions there was a lot of bloated unused stuff in the registry. One of our 'more brilliant' developers 'Nole' wrote his own regclean application to clean up the crap left in there. He walked over with it on a floppy and gave it to a more senior developer and said he had tested it etc. The person took the floppy, and his word and ran it on his computer... and that was the end of that computer. The regclean apparently completely (I mean completely) deleted everything out of the registry so the OS could no longer find parts of the OS itself. It is a story that lives on -- long after the person left...

It is possible to restore the registry if it has been deleted or if a portion of it is so corrupt that the computer won't boot. The system occasionally makes backups of the registry and puts it in a very secret hidden location. (You have to search Microsoft to find out where it is located.) You need to know the location of the backup and the normal location of the registry. To restore the registry, remove the boot disk from the computer and mount it as an external drive on a different computer. Then copy the latest backup of the registry (noting the file dates) into the normal location. Put the disk back into the original computer and boot it up. If you installed any software after the date of the backup, reinstall it, and check all the settings you may have changed. You should be back in business. This is a lot easier than a complete reinstall (took me 15 minutes) and it is a good last resort before wiping the disk and starting over again.

Thanks Thio

The 1:46 example of keys and values is equivalent to variables, Variables have a name(key), and some data(value) to store in itself

"Nothing is working!" How is this different from normal windows I'm lost

The registry was introduced in Windows 3.11, but wasn't fully used until Windows 95. Windows is the only operating system, that I know off, that uses a registry. I am careful when I make a change in the registry.

Joe: Do not try this at home. Me on a virtual machine: You were saying?

It's for reasons like this that if something bad was to happen to my computer that I right away ordered backup recovery software from my computers manufacture so I could do a factory reset if the worst was to happen. This way I don't have to pay a computer shop to reinstall my operating system. I always store my data on external storage. So I never have to worry about losing that info. And even so, every couple of years I like to do a fresh install of my operating system to help wipe out all the garbage that doesn't normally get deleted during normal maintenance cycles.

What if you set everything in the registry to 0

This is hilarious definitely going to have a bad day if you try this. Why don't for your next video see if you can use PowerShell to break windows

Didn't even watch yet - but pressed like only for the wonderful ideas you have.

The registry editor if used responsively or with precautions it can be a really usefull program

That moment when you mess up your old notebook laptop and you deleted the UI itself so you have to use ctrl alt delete with the task manager to get around.

I messed around with registry editor one day and somehow enabled the seconds on the clock.

Could you make it bootable by pasting in the registry files from a different Windows installation?

You could have tried to repair the BCD from the Recovery command prompt using the command: BOOTREC /RebuildBCD

I'm not sure deleting the whole registry from the registry editor is a good approach. I think what you'd want to do is just delete whatever files the registry is stored in completely (using another OS if needed), and get the same effect for a lot less work. That said, I wonder what parts of the registry could be deleted without making Windows unbootable? What would be the minimum configuration needed to get it running? I would say it's definitely possible to get that installation working again, though. The main thing keeping it from getting any further into the boot process is the total lack of understanding what kind of hardware it's even running on. Windows basically has no idea what kind of chipset drivers to even use to read the hard drive once control is handed off from the BIOS now. Deleting the registry now is like if you deleted the WIN.INI file in Windows 3.11 that tells Windows what video card driver to use, only worse because there's no DOS underneath it running IO.SYS. So if you really wanted to get the installation back, you would only need a working copy of the registry from an installation of Windows on equivalent hardware. The easiest way to get that would be to reinstall Windows on another hard drive using the same machine, then take that version of the registry and put it into the broken installation. Granted, you would have to do more work to get programs dependent on the registry that didn't come with Windows to work again, entering and creating a bunch of registry keys they require by hand, but it can be done. A fresh installation of Windows would certainly be easier, but if you can get access to the file system, you can fix it eventually.

This video made my skin crawl. Even the thought of it freaks me out.

Windows registry: HKEY Me: huh KEY

Please help, i lost my files when i interfered with my computer Registry Editor. The computer Space is reduced meaning the files were lost. But applications, such as Google Chrome, are working. How can i restore my documents?

Going out of the realm of software, I’d like to see what happens if you open up your PC, take a wire and connect 1 end to one of the pins on a RAM chip, then touch the other end to random pins on the RAM chip. Same thing applies to other chips on the motherboard.

Video idea: 10 DUMB Ways To Destroy Your Windows Installation I mean if you plan to reinstall windows you may want to destroy old one before formatting PC.

Ima try this at home... on a virtual computer, must see this myself

Do I have to buy a new computer for Win 10 or can I overwrite Win 7 on my current computer?

4:56 it wasn’t the registry it was *DUOLINGO!*

Discord squad

Interesting video! I'm having a lot of fun watching you break the computer. (Even though it's on a virtual machine. ) 😂😂🤣🤣

What if you have Windows 11 and you edited the registry with the usual steps to revert back to Windows 10 start menu, created the new folder, renamed it "Start_ShowClassicMode" changed the value from 0 to 1, and after restarting your computer you notice that it didn't work, what would be a recommendation?

My friend was annoyed by Caps Lock, he used the Registry Editor to bind the Caps Lock function to F24. He also binded the Caps Lock key to a bunch of useful stuff that he normally would need keybinds for. For curious: F24 exists in Windows because of back compatibility, but the F12 - F24 keys do not exists in today's keyboards.

0:48 then i will try it at school

On school computers, I used to login and one of the first things is it would say is applying registry policy, I wasn't a computer geek yet so I thought the registry policy was a policy needed to register an account

I accidently deleted 2 small binary files from a tiny folder in regedit and now any of my games are not launching

RIP Windows Registry April 1992 - August 2018

On the one hand, it's great fun to see what happens if the Registry is deleted. On the other hand, it's pathetic that one of the largest pieces of software in terms of lines of code, distribution, regular use at many different levels etc., relies on a virtually unprotected, outdated and poorly backed-up 'tissue paper' database. How old is Windows now (rhetorical question)? Old enough for under-grad kind of trash such as this to have been developed out of it. Is the Registry in the Enterprise edition so exposed to destruction? I use Erunt to back my Registry up at the start and end of each session. I keep the backups off-machine, but to be honest, I don't know that even Erunt saves the Registry in full, YMMV.

I accidentally deleted the whole system files. But some files didn't get deleted and some files got faded. When i installed an antivirus the faded files too gone. What's happened out there?

Apparently I never got notified of this when it first came out maybe I got notification and just dismissed it because I was in a rush but glad I found it now because I enjoyed it

6:25 if u did this on a fresh install you had to make sure system restore was on as those 'backup' registry files u used were ZERO Kb. you need to create a system restore point which gets created the minute u install an update or anything significant like office. so you could ha e fixed this, you jua5 didnt prep for the video i guess or simply sisnt know this little nuget of undocumented info also system restore is not always on by default on a fresh inatall of windows especially with the many flavours of 10 from memory 1509 had it off after a fresh load but turned on after updating. had u ran system restore by invoking it from winpe you would have fixed this. wildows is pretty hard to break.

Hey thio try to run 100 viruses in your virtual machine

TJ: Don't try this in home! Me: *watchin' this on my arch

This is why you image the entire system before you try anything that may cause major damage. ... Thio, I do have a question: Is it possible to modify a program, say Turbotax 2018 so that it will install on Windows XP PRO SP3 ? ? Right now it is limited to Windows 7 and newer (not sure if Vista would work) ... If this can be done, what program do I need to use to do it ? ? A search does not turn up any useful information about it. As far as I can tell, Turbotax is not overly complex and XP should be able to run it. .. Thanks

i wanna do this to school computers now lol

None of this REGISTERS with my mind.

So I was trying to delete startup programs that I had deleted but where still there, and I made a back up. Now I cant run mp3 files and my backup wont work. It just says,"Not all data was successfully written to the registry. Some keys are open by the system or other processes, or you have insufficient privileges to perform this operation." Theres nothing in reback either. Any suggestions?

@ThioJoe i love your content keep up the awesome work

What might it look like if you could delete every single file that *isn't* critical to running the system? Stuff like icon art and maybe secondary backup files

Can you do Linux stuff

This man is a living task manager.

I'd like your help. I know nothing about this stuff. I just got a computer Lenovo L340 with Windows 10 and bought the windows Office 365 or something like that and I'm having issues trying to getting on the computer. How do I go about that?

Video starts at 2:39

i forgot about registry i just watched what happens when you delete system 32

I factory reseted my pc and now when i try to right click on the desktop it just loads, and i saw some fixes were you have to delete 4 files from regedit and i was wondering if that works or if it it just a big bluff. Pls awnser

Virtual machines are basically an operating system but it’s an app that behaves exactly like a brand new installation of windows

Windows "uh what a great day" ThioJoe "deleting everything" Windows "why me" Gigabites "999999999 GB" Games "oof" ThioJoe "OK done" Windows "no don't do it" ThioJeo "presses button""bye Windows

Just go into the recycle bin and restore everything, It's that easy.

I have tried deleting Windows Registry programs in a Windows Vista virtual machine. It let me delete most of the files and when I restarted the machine, it was stuck in a boot loop

Is it just me or does the windows registry logo just look epic

What if you deleted everything

Yeah! Delete more stuff thio! Lol

I wrongly deleted some file of regedit as I wanted to fix to problem of "we can't log into your account" and now I am screwed. Are there any possible ways to recover them to the state when they are working fine???

Mine always shows Windows Script Host is Disabled when I restart my laptop. But I always set the binary to 1 so it can be enabled but it doesn't save when I shut down or restart my pc. Any help?