Registry element size limits

The following table identifies the size limits for the various registry elements.

For an explanation of standard and latest formats, see Registry files.

Registry element	Size limit
Key name	255 characters. The key name includes the absolute path of the key in the registry, always starting at a base key, for example, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
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 to 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:\mydir\myfile". 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.