Internet Explorer Tutorial - Registry Settings

In this tutorial, you will learn how to access the Internet Explorer registry, what information is stored there, and what changes you can make. Note that this tutorial accesses and possibly modifies the registry which requires admin rights on the computer.

Any modifications you make to the registry might lead to unwanted effects if done incorrectly, I advice not to make changes if you are not sure of the effects.

1. Click Start -> Run

The first step to accessing the Internet Explorer registry options is to open the Windows Registry Editor. Do this by clicking Start -> Run and typing "regedit" without the quotes in the window and clicking OK. You will notice on the left pane you can do the navigation between different registry folders.

2. Navigate to the Internet Explorer registry folder

The location for the Internet Explorer registry folder is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

You can click on the "+" to the left of the folder names to expand or collapse that folder. Locate the above mentioned folder to get to the Internet Explorer registry settings.

3. Folder Branches

Once you get to the folder from step 2, you will notice there are a lot of sub folders branching from this Internet Explorer registry folder. If you click on the "+" next to a branched folder's name to expand it, it will reveal sub folders and keys. This is where most of the Internet Explorer registry information is stored. If you wanted to make changes to the functionality of Internet Explorer at the registry level, this is where you would do it.

A lot of the folders that are under this Internet Explorer registry folder are going to be gibberish to the human reader but there are some that you actually might find useful. Some of the common Internet Explorer registry keys along with what information is stored in the keys are shown below:

View Source Editor\Editor Name: The HTML editor that is used when you click "View -> Source" on a page to view the HTML of the page.

Version Vector: IE key has the Internet Explorer version that is installed.

Settings: Link colors, background colors, and text colors are stored here.

Advanced Options: The advanced Internet Explorer options are stored in this folder.

Toolbar: This Internet Explorer registry folder has the information for what is currently on your toolbar.

Extensions: This folder contains a list of the common programs/applications that are associated with Internet Explorer and run automatically.