Windows Registry Editing

Problem:

• You want to know where to get started in locating your Windows registry.
• Accessing the Windows registry differs depending upon what version of Windows you are operating on.
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If you want to know where to get started in locating your Windows registry, you must first know what version of Windows you are operating on. Accessing the Windows registry is different on XP as opposed to how you would access it using an older model such as Windows 95.

We can break the Windows platforms down in to two versions. You have Windows NT and Windows 95. The second is a little misleading in the sense that it’s used on other versions of Microsof’ts flagship operating system, not just the 1995 make.

Windows NT is used for Windows XP, 2000, 2003 and Vista. Windows 95 is used for Windows 95 (surprise surprise!), 98, 98 SE and ME. To locate the Windows registry, you will first need to pick out which operating system platform you are using.

Locating the Windows registry on Windows 95 platforms, you will notice that there are only two registry hives. These are the system.dat and user.dat files. Files are a loose term here. They’re both actually databases, and databases of substantial size at that. You’ll find the registry files located in your Windows folder (C:\Windows). But at first look, you’ll probably notice that the Windows registry files aren’t actually there. This is because the files are automatically hidden across Windows 95 platforms to prevent somebody going in and accidentally editing them.

To see the Windows registry files, you must allow hidden items to show.

By the time Microsoft had rolled out Windows ME, they’d noticed that if the registry files grew too large, they would begin to drop in performance and serious system problems would arise. For this reason, in ME, you’ll see the System.dat divided in to two files; System.dat and Classes.dat. They are both part of the Windows registry and should be treated very delicately indeed!

With Windows NT platforms, you’ll notice that the registry files ate extension-less. They can be located in Windows\System32\Config. The names of the Windows registry files are System, Software, SAM, Security, Default, and UserDiff. They are all absolutely critical and if you edit any of them, you should know exactly what you’re doing.

You will also find one other registry file which does have an extension, and that is the NTuser.dat. This file is created for every user on the system, as decided by other Windows registry entries, and can be found in the Documents and Settings area of the user account.

You may notice on the Windows NT platform that there seems to be a duplicate entry for each registry database file. These are saved under the same names, but with a .sav extension. You don’t need to worry about them. They are created automatically when Windows is installed, but should be kept for safe measure as they are in actual fact back up copies of your factory default settings. So needless to say, if anything goes wrong with your Windows registry, those .sav files could be coming in very handy indeed!

To access the Windows registry direct for editing, you should go to the run command and type regedit. This will open up the editor allowing you to browse between hives and make changes.

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