That simple example was for the services console not the registry.  There are perhaps a dozen or so consoles depending on which flavour of the particular Windows edition that you have. A useful one is the Event Viewer and you can't do any damage with this as it's just a reporting tool. It lists all errors that have occurred on the system. To access it, type eventvwr.msc in the Run box and hit enter. A full list of consoles for XP Professional follows for those who may be interested:

certmgr.msc
ciadv.msc
compmgmt.msc
devmgmt.msc
dfrg.msc
diskmgmt.msc
eventvwr.msc
fsmgmt.msc
gpedit.msc
lusrmgr.msc
ntmsmgr.msc
ntmsoprq.msc
perfmon.msc
rsop.msc
secpol.msc
services.msc
wmimgmt.msc

To access the registry, type regedit in the Run box and hit enter. Have a look at the registry editor by all means but don't change anything - It saves all changes automatically on exit.