To some extent I agree. I see things from a slightly skewed angle I guess. Having manually gotten rid of the $$%*%$ Webshots I know it can be a pain in the ass. I have cured problems using regedit though. Recently I got "zarumba.exe" or whatever. I fixed that with a system restore and probably would never have caught it if my Java was up to date. It nagged me every minute, something it never used to do. My Java is still not updated and I cannot find one single thong that won't work because of it. That supports my claim as well as all those who agree.

It ain't broke. What do you do ?

The registry is a tricky place, it saves on the fly. That's right, delete the wrong key and IF you can weven get into safemode MAYBE a system restore will get it running again. It's like the service menu in some TVs. Damn, think of the RCAs in the satores you could just walk in a **** up. Lower the H freq until it shuts down and see what happens. Good old Mut-1-8-2 and tell the thing something like it is in Malasia or something or disable things. ROFF or something. It is just like that, you CAN **** it up royal.

And there is no "Save" button. It is done immediately but if you ****ed it up you won't know until your next reboot. That's why everyone says to stay out of it. Well, that and the fact that most of it is gibberish. When you go in there you do a search for the right string, usually a program name or something. When it hits, it should also give you the full path to it. Half the time a virus exe will be in your "App Data" under your username, but they sometimes hide in other places. Unless you have ****ed with explorer settings, the directory might not show up for you.

the way I put it to people who want to edit their registry manually is this - I can do this. I know how to do this. there are tools to do this, like control panel for one. Every setting almost, is in that registry and programs do it cleanly and nicely without error most of the time. I do not WANT to use regedit.exe, it is a last resort.

But then again, at one time I got almost DSL speed on wire. I used the wrong modem drivers, told it I was in Brazil, changed the MTU in the registry. OK it wasn't as fast as DSL but it was faster than all the other people with the 56K back in the day.

So I am not afraid of it, but I know to stay away from it unless there is good reason. Think of it as exploratory surgery.

That's about right.