[pxc]

I recently disabled a service from running upon user login on a Windows PC, with a commitment to doing it in a way that can be automated and stored in source control.

I had to check literally more than a dozen locations in the registry (some in different hives) just to see where the thing was actually set to autoload. I then had to create new keys in still another location whose type was simply arbitrary binary data, and the only way to determine what actual value was needed there was to examine the registry before and after disabling and then reenabling the startup profile in the GUI.

The Windows registry is an absolute fucking shitshow, and it's a big part of the reason that the OS is inherently hostile to automation. The inherent invisibility of the registry and the systematic underdocumentation of registry schemas for applications and OS components makes figuring out how to do anything in a repeatable way a fucking quest.

> I personally use the `dconf-editor` program to find the right keys

For GUI applications, config files are often undocumented anyway. But to me having to run an application and see how it messes with its configuration in some database when you click buttons is an insane way to figure out how settings are declared or stored. I would so much rather the configuration format be plaintext and documented than be expected to reverse engineer my apps' friggin' config files!