Windows 10: Regedit crashes during registry searches

When I run a regedit search I am guaranteed that regedit will get stuck every single time while displaying the "Searching the registry" message box. When I eventually click the cancel button, I get the message that regedit has stopped working. I can repeat ad-nauseum, even after a clean re-boot.

I have read on the web that this is not that uncommon and that it might be caused by registry keys that are longer than 255 characters. This causes regedit to get stuck as it cannot read longer keys.

Is there a easy fix for this, why has it happened and how can I go about identifying which key/keys are longer than the 255 character maximum?

:)

 

Windows 10 Registry Editor has stopped working

When during a search inside regedit.exe appears the error "Registry Editor crashed":

The regedit crashed and gives error when there are keys that are too big ... keys with more than 255 characters.

(from Registry Editor crashing - Page 3 - Windows 10 Forums)

But earlier versions of Regedit.exe worked right.

The version of regedit that does not work is the 10586 and which was installed after the updates and which is in c:\windows

The previous version (RTM version 10240) windows kept in the C:\Windows.old\Windows and works flawlessly.

Solution: replace the new file that is located in c:\windows\regedit.exe with the old one that is in C:\Windows.old\Windows

 

Windows 10 Registry Editor has stopped working

Got exactly same problem. After latest Windows Update, regedit is working strangely, including:

• Never-ending search (search dialog won't finish when it can't find next occurence of searched text)
• After clicking cancel in search dialog (the "Searching the registry..." one), regedit crashes

 

Hello there is a very long thread on this and many similar on this forum.
Briefly
- we await a fix from MS
- meanwhile use a 3rd party registry editor.
Regscanner is free and very much more helpful in searching the registry.

 

There are 100 billion threads about this on this forum - you could search by putting "regedit.exe" in the search box at the top right hand corner *Wink

The best answer I could find however was this: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...5d19eb8?auth=1

What you can do to fix it is:

1. Install regedit from 10240 build (if you have a backup or can find a 10240 ISO it is not a problem otherwise you'll have to search either for somewhere to download the ISO or the files).

Then copy regedit.exe into C:\Windows and regedit.exe.mui into your language directory. (C:\Windows\en-US for example). That works fine (I'm on 14342 build at the moment). Someone on these forums uploaded the 10240 versions regedit.exe and the en-US .mui I think. I can't find it and anyway you may use another language.

2. Not use regedit and use another third party registry editor.

3. Not worry about it. If you browse to where you want to go regedit works fine. It is only when you search you get the problem.

How you identify the specific keys I don't know - there are some examples here on the forum. I just find searching the whole registry it doesn't work and has not since 10526 update in November - if I browse to where I want to go it is OK.

I guess fixing regedit search functionality is not the top priority of MS and who can blame them. If you are changing the registry for some reason you should probably know where and not just look for similar text strings in a huge database.

I do that sometimes though I must admit...

 

Great thanks. I guess the most important part right now is that I am part of "100 billion" and not a few isolated souls with little hope of a fix. *Cool I won't bother too much about this then, even though my Windows 10 laptop has no problem with regedit.

The reason I was scanning regedit was searching out entries for "GTX 780" as I recently upgraded my GPU to a GTX 980 Ti. For the time that regedit did work (hitting F3 "Find next" repeatedly) it did find quite a few entries relating to my previous GTX 780. I changed these to 980 - making a backup first of course. I did this because for some reason, my PC is booting into Windows slower than normal and the only thing that changed was installing the new GPU and driver.

 

OK, I overstated it, Not 100 billion. Perhaps 100 thousand. Or 100. I have the same problem myself and all you can do is use the old version. Or not use it.

I think your problems with slow boot are unrelated but I only have a laptop so I don't know. I just know fiddling with the registry never helped me (I've tried often to uninstall the last bits of things manually like that).

If I was you apart from forgetting about regeit is (and I sound like a bit of an evangelist for this today as it is the second time I've said it) is try a repair install. If however you have changed 780 to 980 a repair install will not fix this and you will never know if you have changed some but not all keys as their developers could have called them anything. Microsoft suggest naming conventions and locations but hardly anyone follows them.

Bottom line, it really doesn't matter if there is crap in your registry as long as nothing is looking at it. You could have 10 or 100 for 100,000 entries for "GTX 780" and it would make no difference. The size is tiny and it will simply sit on disk unless something tries to access it.

My bet is that the new driver has added some startup item. You can have a look with autoruns

In your position if repair install doesn't work I'd clean install. You'll still be (like me) part of the "regedit doesn't work" group though I'm afraid.