What are Registry Files?

Registry Files are files used by the Windows Registry. A collection of databases, the Windows Registry contains configuration settings, options, and other necessary details about program and hardware installed on Microsoft's Windows operating system — specifically low-level settings. It can be used by the kernel as well as device drivers, services, the user interface, and the Security Accounts Manager.

On your computer's disk, the Windows Registry is saved in a number of discrete files called hives, each of which can contains a Registry tree. These files are known as Registry Files and are created and managed by the system in the memory. There are a number of different file extensions used by Registry Files for different tasks and purposes, from “.REG” files used to update the Windows Registry to “.LOG2” files to store trace information.

Types of Popular Registry Files

LOG2 — Format: Binary
Files with this extension contain Windows Registry log file information and are created during the Windows Installation process. Saved as hidden files on Windows, they contain trace information about the Windows Registry hive. Each time a change is made to the Windows registry, a new log file has to be created to store that information with its own log extension. Normally, the “.LOG2” file extensions is only used when the “.LOG” and “.LOG1” file extensions are already being used by the system to store some information.

File Extension	Total Number of Files	Oldest File (Date)	Latest File (Date)
LOG2	20	SCHEMA.DAT.LOG2 (11/02/2006)	New360_formal_8143095755_7932_1.log2 (11/30/2019)
REG	129	handler.reg (09/18/2006)	rtcpal_registry.reg (03/24/2020)

What are Registry Files?

Types of Popular Registry Files

File Database Breakdown - Registry File Extensions

Top Registry File Extensions