There is no registry like this in Windows 3.1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry#Windows_3.11 (and the comment on top)
And http://www.win31.de/etips.htm
There are good and easy ini files that have your back!

As stated above windows 3x does not have regedit or a registry. I think 3.11 added a reg.dat file for com objects or something.

dann86 wrote on 2020-01-03, 16:44:

As stated above windows 3x does not have regedit or a registry. I think 3.11 added a reg.dat file for com objects or something.

There IS a reg.dat introduced with Windows 3.1 and some programs even used it, there is also a regedt16.exe. Newer versions of this invoked with /v are actually useable (as found on the second link I just added).

Dominus wrote on 2020-01-03, 16:49:

dann86 wrote on 2020-01-03, 16:44:

As stated above windows 3x does not have regedit or a registry. I think 3.11 added a reg.dat file for com objects or something.

There IS a reg.dat introduced with Windows 3.1 and some programs even used it, there is also a regedt16.exe. Newer versions of this invoked with /v are actually useable (as found on the second link I just added).

I thought it was added in 3.11? Not really 100% sure. Its been years since i used 3.1.

I checked a Windows 3.1 and it's there.

Not sure if it was just a urban myth but remember one countries military was reluctant to upgrade to Win95 due to the introduction of the registry as they thought 1 central file with so much information of the setup as a security risk.

Well it isn't a crazy idea. If your read forensics blogs you might be amazed at all the information they can pull from various locations but really if you access to the system you can also search the hard drive for .ini files with a script so consolidated vs spread out security wise isn't much of an issue. No ACLs in DOS and 9x days either.

Windows 3.1 does have REGEDIT.EXE and REG.DAT, but I think it's only used for file types registration.

Some later programs used it for their settings.

Windows 3.10 and 3.11 (both original and "for Workgroups") have the registry and its editor (c:\windows\reg.dat and c:\windows\regedit.exe). But it is containing only HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive and nothing other. So if the RegEdit is started without arguments it will only show file type/OLE associations. To see the registry as is, use verbose mode: regedit /v .

If it is not present, probably it's not installed via Windows Setup utility (Components-> Accesoires->Registration or Accessoires->File types, sorry, currently I have no English-localized version of W3.1x to say exactly name, but in Russian it is not a simply "registry editor" and non easy to find).

Thanks for the information.

I moved my windows 3.1 install to a network drive along with all Windows applications so the drive letter changed from C to E.
I got to use the registry editor to fix a few programs that stopped running because "missing C:\xx\yy\zz...".