The Windows 10 Registry process explained

Recent versions of Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system, for instance build 17063, come with a new process that is just called Registry.

If you have spotted the Registry process already on a machine running Windows 10, you probably asked yourself what it is all about, and whether it is a legitimate process or not.

Open the Windows Task Manager with the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Esc, and scroll down the list of processes to locate it. It uses a bit of memory but little to no CPU, disk, network or GPU.

You find the Registry process listed under the Processes and the Details tab.

Windows 10 Registry process

The Windows 10 Task Manager offers no information on the process other than its name. While you can right-click on it, selecting "properties" or "open file location" does nothing.

You can go to the details tab to find out that it runs under the system user, and that its description states "Registry" only.

Microsoft added a bit of information to a post on the Windows Experience blog. According to Microsoft, the Registry process is a "minimal process whose address space is used to hold data on behalf of the kernel".

The Registry process is used to hold Software and User Registry hive data (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER) to utilize memory management capabilities and, in the future, reduce the memory usage of the Registry in the future.

Storing registry hive data in the registry process gives the registry access to more powerful memory management capabilities which will allow us to reduce the registry’s memory usage in the future.

The memory usage of the Registry process increased in the most recent build because of hive data being handled by the process. The kernel paged pool however decreased by the same amount of memory as it was used to store the hive data previously but is no longer used for that.

Closing Words

The Registry process in Windows 10 is a native process that the Windows 10 operating system uses. It may be new at this time, but it is not something that users need to worry about.