REGBINARY

REGBINARY (commonly written as REG_BINARY) is a Windows Registry value type used to store raw binary data. It holds an arbitrary sequence of bytes and is suitable for data that does not map naturally to text, numbers, or multi-string formats. In the Windows API and system tools, registry values of this type are presented and edited as hexadecimal byte sequences.

Applications and drivers use REG_BINARY to store device parameters, configuration blobs, serialized structures, checksums, GUIDs, certificates, and other non-textual information. When accessed programmatically, functions such as RegSetValueEx and RegQueryValueEx accept and return the data as byte arrays. Scripting and management tools (for example, PowerShell and reg.exe) typically expose REG_BINARY values as byte arrays or hex strings.

There is no intrinsic semantic interpretation enforced by the registry; meaning and structure are determined by the producing application. Practical limits on value size are imposed by the operating system, API call constraints, and available resources rather than by the type itself. Because REG_BINARY stores raw bytes, it is not human-readable and is not a secure means of protecting sensitive data; encryption or secure storage mechanisms should be used for secret material. REG_BINARY is one of several registry data types and is chosen when data must be preserved exactly without character encoding or numeric interpretation.