I'm working on fixing bugs and adding features in my company's Internet Explorer toolbar. I'm fairly new to the raw Windows API, and I'm completely amazed at what programs can do.

For instance, when you call the Registry functions, you tell them the name of the key you want to read or write. There's a bug that I'm trying to fix in which the uninstallation process, at some point, tries to delete its own registry settings. However, instead of requesting its own folder, it occasionally requests the empty string ("") as its name.

Instead of rejecting the request, the Windows API simply grants access to a key with no name: the root key. So the uninstaller requests that Windows delete the root key, and therefore, the entire registry.

Windows lets this happen.

I'm posting this from another computer as Windows reinstalls itself.