As a recovering Windows user, I have to say that playing with the registry is just asking for trouble. It only takes a very minor mistake to corrupt the registry, and that could leave your system unbootable. Ask me how I know this ;-)

If you *do* want to play around with the registry, make sure you've made a good backup of it, and also review (before you begin) how to restore a corrupt registry. It can be done, but it's hard to read the help files once you've lost the ability to boot.