I assume you are somewhat familiar with the Windows registry due to editing
it for various reasons. We normally use the Regedit Windows Accessory to look at
and modify the registry directly without writing our own program. If you have
not, then try it now. Don't change anything; just look around.
The format of the registry is not entirely obvious. It uses hierarchical
keys, very much like directories in a file system. The hierarchical keys are
easy enough to understand. For each key, however, there is at least one "value".
Each value has a name and data. It is easy to confuse the term "value" with just
the data portion of a registry value, and the SDK does little to make it clear.
Using Regedit, the keys are on the left and the values are on the right.
Each key has at least one value in which the name is an empty string. It is
often given the name "(default)", but the real name is an empty string. Note
that I am not referring to the data of the value; I am saying that the value
name for the "(default)" value is an empty string.