Some Registry values are easy to understand. Find a file path, say, and you’ll often be able to figure out its purpose at a glance.

Dates and times, though? That’s often a very different matter.

Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows in your Registry editor, for instance, and you’ll find the Shutdown value, which is where Windows records when the system was last closed down. Useful information, perhaps, except that for efficiency the system uses a cryptic binary format to save the data, so all you’ll read is something like “8d 67 62 2b b0 7c cc 01”. Which is less than obvious.

With a copy of DCode, though, this doesn’t have to be a problem. Just launch the program (it’s portable, no installation required), enter the mystery value in the “Value to Decode” box, click Decode, and the correct date and time will be displayed (Tue, 27 September 2011 00:55:37 UTC in our example).

By default DCode assumes you’re using the most common Windows date and time format (“64 bit Hex Value – Little Endian”). But the program also supports conversion from a lengthy list of other formats: Windows 64 bit (big endian), Windows Cookie, Windows 64 bit OLE, Windows SYSTEM Structure, Hotmail / Email Filetime, Unix 32 bit (little endian), Unix 32 bit (big endian), Unix numeric, Google Chrome, Apple Mac Absolute, MS-DOS wFatTime, wFatDate, MS-DOS wFatDate, wFatTime, HFS 32 bit (little endian), HFS 32 bit (big endian), HFS+ (big endian) and HFS+ (little endian). So if you know the original value is using one of these, just choose it from the list to see the correct value.

What we really like about DCode, though, are the program’s many thoughtful extras.

It doesn’t mind if you enter spaces in your initial value, for instance (they’ll be stripped out before conversion). It can copy original or converted values to or from the clipboard, at a click. If you’re using it a lot then the option to keep the window on top of others will be convenient. And if the value relates to some other system, then you can even add a time zone bias to be sure you have the exact time.

It’s all very useful, and helps to make DCode an essential tool to have around for anyone who ever goes browsing the Registry (or may need to figure out date values from other binary details).