The following table identifies the size limits for the various registry elements.
|
Registry Element |
Size Limit |
|
Key name |
255 characters |
|
Value name |
16,383 characters Windows 2000: 260 ANSI characters or 16,383 Unicode characters. |
|
Value |
Available memory (latest format) 1 MB (standard format) |
|
Tree |
A registry tree can be 512 levels deep. You can create up to 32 levels at a time through a single registry API call. |
Long values (more than 2,048 bytes) should be stored in a file, and the location of the file should be stored in the registry. This helps the registry perform efficiently.
The file location can be the name of a value or the data of a value. Each backslash in the location string must be preceded by another backslash as an escape character. For example, specify "C:\mydir\myfile" to store the string "C:mydirmyfile". A file location can also be the name of a key if it is within the 255-character limit for key names and does not contain backslashes, which are not allowed in key names.
