It's huge, it's slow and it's fragile. When something goes wrong with it, reinstalling Windows will carefully preserve the problem. All you can do is blow away the registries, reinstall Windows, then reinstall most everything else. It can easily take most of a day.

I have seen Microsoft's new "repair registry" function actually work without trashing the whole system - once.

The registry isn't going to go away either, because it's where Microsoft loves to hide registration and licensing information. With Office 97 you could just replace the icons after blowing the registry, but with Office 2000 you have to reinstall - with the same license code.

I remember the awful mess when a client's Office 2000 Pro got damaged and he "couldn't find the CDs". He tried to reinstall with Office 2000 Small Business Edition. It took me over two hours of hand editing the registry before I could get Office to install again.

The first thing I do when a Windows computer comes under my care is fire up REGEDIT to get the registration code for Windows and record it so the machine can be maintained. If it won't boot, I boot on a floppy and use XTree Gold to search the registry for the code. The clients can never match their machines to their licenses.

OS/2 .INI files are databases similar to the registry, but they are all very small, easily understandable and editable (with a .INI editor program), and most programs have their own .INIs (if they need a .INI at all).