Here’s a lesson I learned very early on in my PC adventures: be very careful with the Windows Registry. While individual entries can be modified to do a number of useful things, changing the wrong value can quickly get you into big trouble.
While that’s still the case, Windows 10 seems to be much more resilient to mass changes to the registry than you might expect. YouTube channel Come on Windows has taken it to the extreme and changed every entry to contain the value zero (via Tom’s Hardware). And while this breaks the vast majority of functionality (.exe files no longer run, for example), Windows 10 apparently still runs, allows logins and logoffs, and even a bit of fiddling around with Paint and WordPad.
Using a registry replacement tool, every value was zeroed out while Come on Windows ran some random tests. While Paint and WordPad ran continuously, Windows 10 quickly lost key functionality, including the ability to detect which CPU it was running on.
I don’t know much about the 2000th Gen Intel Core i7 00800H, but according to this faulty installation, this was the chip that was at the core of its problematic mind.
Microsoft Edge seemed to hold out longer than most. It ran happily through the introductory tutorial before crashing, while various Windows folders closed themselves with a “Class not registered” message. Kudos to the 3D Objects folder, the least useful of all Windows folders. Now sealed for all eternity, or at least until reboot.
Speaking of reboots, although Windows seems to allow logoffs and logins in this unfortunate state, Come on Windows confirms in the comments that after a reboot, Windows will attempt to recover itself using the automatic repair tool and blame it on “corrupted or missing files.”
Look further
Still, it’s an interesting test of what exactly would happen if you committed the mortal sin of messing up your registry entries. While the approach here isn’t exactly scientific, Windows 10 seems to be somewhat resistant to such foolishness. I would have bet on an instant crash, but hey, the more you know the better.
Now, just for fun, let’s see what happens if you set everything to the value of “1” instead. I’m betting on something similar. Although I do want to do a bit of testing at home on my personal machine, I think I’d rather leave this sort of thing to someone braver than me.
Is this the point where, despite the resilience shown here, I tell you that you shouldn’t modify your own registry entries unless you’re willing to break your computer?
OK, for the sake of accuracy I’ll add the caveat that for very specific changes it’s worth following explicit instructions from trusted sources. Regardless, it’s often best to leave the secrets of the registry to a qualified person if you don’t know what you’re doing, folks. Otherwise you may just have to use Paint and WordPad forever, or at least until Windows does its best to undo your bad decisions.
