What is HKEY?

Question

I did a check thing on my computer, and that kept showing up as invalid and needed attention... is it a virus or something?

Answer 1

HKEY stands for "Handle to Registry Key" and is a typedef supplied in the Windows headers files. The Window architects use the opaque handle scheme that most operating systems use. When requesting resources from the operating system, you are given a "handle" or cookie that represents the real object. In order to protect the internals from changes, the handle is not the actual data. The folks working on the registry system happened to want to differentiate a handle returned from the registry from one returned from CreateFile, for example. Therefore, they called it HKEY.

Answer 2

EXACTLY *WHAT* "check thing" did you do? And exactly what did the error say? This would be useful information. ;)

HKEY is a file in your system's Registry. It could be infected. UPDATE and Use your anti-virus and other anti-malware programs to find out if the computer is in fact infected and clean it. If that doesn't correct the issue, then the computer could need to have a System Restore done on it and then a Defrag (BOTH in Safe Mode) or it could need updates.

If you don't know what you're doing while "cruising around" in your system you can mess up your computer really bad, even to the point that you'll lose all of your data and the computer will have to be reformatted.

>The above was edited for clarity and to add more precise info.

>The below was added after the above because I wanted to give an answer and then research, clarify it and submit it.

"HKEY stands for "Handle to Registry Key" and is a typedef supplied in the Windows headers files. The Window architects use the opaque handle scheme that most operating systems use. When requesting resources from the operating system, you are given a "handle" or cookie that represents the real object. In order to protect the internals from changes, the handle is not the actual data. The folks working on the registry system happened to want to differentiate a handle returned from the registry from one returned from CreateFile, for example. Therefore, they called it HKEY."

From:
http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/eac/knowledgebaseAnswer/0,295199,sid63_gci986041,00.html


EDIT: I just found out that I stumbled upon the same website as jim, the first answerer gave. I didn't "steal" it from him. It took me some time to research and by the time I posted a lot of folks had been able to beat me to submitting my answer.

EDIT #2. After EXTENSIVE searching for a different site defining HKEY, I have concluded that it is highly possible that the particular site that both jim and I found is the only one of it's kind ranking high enough in the Y! and Google search engines to be found easily.

Answer 3

Was it something like hkey_current_user, hkey_users, hkey_lokal_machine or hkey_classes_root?
Don't peek your nose into things you don't know. These things belong to the system registry, to be seen by pressing Win+R and then typing in regedit. Do you now see them? The registry is an essential part of the system. If there's an error message including hkey..., you might have registry problems. Ask a professional and don't operate around on your computer system or you might kill it.

Answer 4

HKEY denotes an entry in the windows registry. It might be a virus or other malicious program, but it's far more probable that some regular program messed up with the registry. I can't remember the names (I'm windows free for years now), but there are a number of freeware registry checker programs that could fix it. Try searching for "registry check freeware" or "registry clean freeware".

Answer 5

It refers to an entry in the registry. It will either be HKEY_CurrentUser or HKEY_LocalMachine, meaning it either affects just your account or all user logins. What did the full message say? Don't panic, I'm sureit's something that can easily be rectified.

Answer 6

handle to register key don''t knoe