Registry directory windows 2000

Files without extensions contain the actual data for a root node. The content of the various registry root nodes are also known as hives see Figure 6. Files with a. During the Windows startup you can distinguish two distinct stages: the text-mode stage and the graphics stage. When the system is about to leave the text-mode procedure, it saves the hives to the respective. If problems occur during the next graphic-mode step, the system restarts, but it doesn't repeat the whole setup procedure.

It skips the text-mode step and reads the content of the registry hives from the respective. Files with the. Despite the extension that might make you think this is a text file, the content of the. The registry folder also contains one file with an extension of. Windows utilizes only one ALT file, system.

Figure 7 shows how the hives that are visible from the Registry Editor map to physical files. The content of HKCU and the content of the hives for other users are stored in different folders. In particular, you'll find files called ntuser. The Knowledge Base articles Q and Q describe in detail how to get and set the registry size limit programmatically. Don't forget, however, that you need to restart the machine for the changes to take effect. Registry data is grouped into root nodes roughly following the schema depicted in Figure 8.

In most cases, the same information can be set and read through API functions without directly accessing the registry. However, this is not necessarily true of all the information you might want to access. Knowing where to search for useful information can save you time and allow you to better integrate with the rest of the system. All the available information about registered file types and system objects is stored in the HKCR hive.

This is also the hive to explore if you need to verify whether a certain COM object exists and is correctly installed. In the remainder of the article, I'll examine a few stumbling blocks and provide tips to accomplish tasks that would be impossible without modifying the registry. In doing so, I'll discuss little-known keys and entries.

I'll talk about access to file classes, current settings for system objects, infotips, and regedit's lastkey behavior. This has not changed since Windows Due to limitations inherent in the file system architecture, the only way to group files into classes is by the file extension. All the files with a given extension belong to a certain class, regardless of their actual content.

Not all the class information for bitmaps is stored under the. For a more flexible programming interface, an extension node points to another node that gathers all the information about the file class. The name of the file class for a certain file extension is stored in the unnamed default entry for the file type. For example, the file class for bitmap files is usually Paint. This is where you should search for information about bitmap images such as the icon, description, context menu, and shell extensions.

The decoupling of extension and class allows different programs to register as the default handler for those files by changing a single entry and without overriding other programs' settings.

Along with file classes and COM objects, the HKCR hive also contains the current settings for a number of system objects such as folders, directories, drives, and printers. You can update the standard configuration of any of these objects individually, but you can also apply the same changes to groups of objects. The Folder key includes both folders and file system directories. The Directory key refers only to file system directories.

Windows introduces a new system object called AllFileSystemObjects, under which you can enter configuration information for both files and directories. You've probably noticed that infotips abound in the Windows Explorer, and not only for those file classes for which an infotip shell extension has been registered. Explorer, in fact, provides standard infotips for any file that appears in the shell view.

The text displayed doesn't come from a systemwide infotip extension; it's read from various locations within the registry. Figure 9 shows the standard infotip for a VBScript file. For more details and source code about infotip shell extensions, please refer to my article " Enhance Your User's Experience with New Infotip and Icon Overlay Shell Extensions " in the March issue.

Once the Windows shell detects the file type, it attempts to locate and load an infotip shell extension for that class. If it fails, it then searches for an Infotip entry under the file class node. For example, the default file class for ASP files is aspfile. If it fails again, the standard infotip is used.

Figure 11Simple Infotip. Interestingly, the standard infotip is customizable. Its text looks like this:. Figure 12Extended Infotip.

On an NTFS volume, extra fields such as Author and Subject are stored through multiple data streams for any type of file that doesn't contain a SummaryInformation block in its own body.

In particular, you can alter the order in which the information is rendered and you can add new fields as well.

For example,. Figure 13New Custom Infotip. If you use the Registry Editor on a daily basis there's another feature that you might find annoying over time: the automatic selection of the last accessed key. The name of the last key is stored in the LastKey entry under the Regedit node. Deleting this key is of no help since the key is overwritten or created upon exit.

A partial solution is using regedt In particular, you can deny write access to the key to any users or groups you want, as shown in Figure Make sure you apply the restriction to the Regedit key only, not to all of its subkeys.

If you restrict the subkeys, you'll be unable to add and delete items to and from the favorites list. Figure 14Regedit Permissions. At this point, you've successfully stopped the Registry Editor from selecting the last accessed key, but you also introduced a couple of predictable side effects.

Since write permissions to the registry can be granted or denied only at the key level, there's no way to lock individual registry entries. Blocking the Regedit node also prevents the application from using the other two entries defined at the same level of LastKey: FindFlags and, more importantly, View.

FindFlags maintains the state of the Find dialog, whereas View remembers the size and position of the program's window. This information will become unavailable once you deny writing permissions to the Regedit node.

Henceforth, the program can't reopen where you closed it, nor can it remember the last find settings. You'll have to decide if these settings are important for you to maintain. In this section I'll explain how to selectively set the visibility of file extensions show or hide , set default behavior for double-clicking, control the Open With menu behavior, and manage connected HTML files, which I'll define later. As you know, there are folder properties to hide or show the extension for known file types.

There might be circumstances, however, in which you don't want the same setting to apply to all file classes. For example, suppose you want to hide the extension for the majority of files, but not for a couple of classes, say,.

By defining an AlwaysShowExt entry in the class node, you force the shell to override the current setting and always show the extension for those files. Conversely, if you always want to show the file extension except in a few instances, create a NeverShowExt entry in the appropriate class node. For a practical demonstration of this feature, consider shortcut files. By design, Explorer never shows the.

In Figure 15 you can see that if you remove the entry, the. Figure 15Start Menu. Another way to use registry entries to set behavior is to define the action of a double mouse click. The Windows Application Specification documentation recommends that you always associate an action for double clicking on a file.

This usually means defining an Open command for the file. Make sure all programs are closed, except the Help and Support windows, and click OK to continue. Verify the date and time of the restore point and enter it into Table 3.

It is recommended that only advanced users and system administrators change these settings. It is always a good idea to keep track of the changes that you've made. In this section, you learned how to use Windows Me or 98 system tools to gather information and resolve system problems. When troubleshooting, it is important to gather information so that you can make informed decisions when attempting to find the problem's root cause.

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However, these communications are not promotional in nature. You need to select and copy do not cut! Click on each one individually and then press F2 to rename them. Now you need to delete the currently used registry hive files by typing these lines one by one: del system del software del sam del security del default 3. Now you need to copy the Restore Point files so that Windows can load from them.

Boot into Windows normally. It should work properly. As a further measure in case there are hidden glitches created as a result of manual restoration, you can open System Restore in the Start Menu and roll back to the second last Restore Point prior to the time you encountered this problem.

XP setup disks. There are two ways of going about this. I found the instructions on this guide, but typing out all those commands was tedious. EXE and ChkReg. EXE to c:a4. Unzip the contents of the following ZIP files to c:abbie Navigate to c:a — there should be 21 files in there. Run mkcd. Right-click w2kreg. You can run the. For more information, see How to add, modify, or delete registry subkeys and values by using a Registration Entries.

For more information about these methods, visit the following Microsoft Web sites:. RegDelete method. RegRead method. RegWrite method. WBEM is an industry initiative to develop a standard technology for accessing management information in an enterprise environment.

You can use WMI to automate administrative tasks such as editing the registry in an enterprise environment. For help with the Reg. To restore registry subkeys that you exported, double-click the Registration Entries. Or, you can restore the whole registry from a backup. For more information about how to restore the whole registry, see the Method 2: Restore the whole registry section later in this article. To restore the whole registry, restore the system state from a backup.

For more information about how to restore the system state from a backup, see How to use Backup to protect data and restore files and folders on your computer in Windows XP and Windows Vista. Windows Server Resources Kit. Inside the Registry. DPM is the new standard for Windows backup and recovery and delivers continuous data protection for Microsoft application and file servers that use seamlessly integrated disk and tape media. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, see How to back up and restore the registry in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

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