Regedit is fine as long as you don't tinker with the registry much, but there are several reasons you might want other Registry-related software. Here we explain why you can't do with just Regedit, what software are available, and what they do.
Beyond Regedit
Once you get into editing the Registry regularly, you will notice a whole lot of things that you want to do differently or in a better way. You will want to move around the Registry faster, and speed up searches within the Registry, for example. You will also want to find out what applications are using the Registry and how, what changes are being made, and by which application. Then, of course, you will notice the continual bloating of the Registry due to entries left over from uninstalled applications that have not deleted their entries, from changes made by users, hardware additions, hardware removal, system configuration changes, and so forth.
You might, therefore, need tools beyond Regedit. There are three classes of applications we talk about now: third-party Registry editors, Registry trackers, and Registry cleaners.
3.1 Third-party Registry Editors
Regedit is a pretty basic tool provided by Microsoft. In most cases this should be more than sufficient for the job, since the Registry is not accessed regularly in most cases. But Registry hackers dispel with that convention in pursuit of the ultimate fine-tuned Registry, and in the pursuit of wanting to get things done faster! This is where third-party Registry editors step in.
These editors extend the standard functionality of Regedit by including powerful productivity enhancements such as faster search, cut/copy/paste functions, bookmarks, and undo options, amongst others.
