Why does the Windows registry exist? [closed]

Centralized -which is useful for roamingprofiles.
Transactional - which makes it harder to smash yourconfiguration.
Security - You can enforce read/write with better granularity than a file (per-key/value).

So that when the binary registry gets corrupted, you'll just give up and go buy the newest version of windows for a fresh install.

CodeHunter