Registry questions

[George J. Wallace]

Hi;
I just added an extra HD to my WinMe machine, partitioned it as 3 drives
(D, E, F) and installed XP as a dual boot system on D. Now it's time to
start installing my applications. I want to take a snapshot of the registry
before and after each install and then run FC (File Compare) on the
snapshots and keep a running list of what keys were added/altered by each
program (I've found that alot of apps like NAV and Adobe Reader leave junk
all over the place when uninstalled/upgraded).
The question is "Where did the registry go?". I had assumed that XP would
have its' own registry in D:\Windows but can't find a USER.DAT or SYSTEM.DAT
anywhere on the D drive. Is NTUSER.DAT the equivalent of USER.DAT? If yes,
then what's the equivalent of SYSTEM.DAT? I've searched the D drive for
files containing HKEY_USERS and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE with no luck. Is XP
relying on the files back in the WinMe partition and if so, am I forever
stuck with keeping WinMe in order to keep those files?
Any help/enlightment would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jerry]

There is software that will monitor registry changes and prepare a list for
you of changes made as you add programs.
Do a Google search.

 

[Scott]

Jerry,

I've always had good success with Remove-It software on my Win95
and Win98 machines, but I couldn't find anything comparable for
Win XP. Instead, I've found that the Add/Remove Programs feature
in Control Panel does a pretty good job. Am I right to rely on this
method...or can anyone recommend a better way?

Thanks!
Scott

 

[George J. Wallace]

Thanks Jerry, I dl'ed RegMon last night and it looks like it might do what
I want. That still doesn't answer my questions, though. Where does the XP
registry live and will I have to keep WinMe around just to keep the UER.DAT
and SYSTEM.DAT files?
Thanks again for any help you can give.

There is software that will monitor registry changes and prepare a list for
you of changes made as you add programs.
Do a Google search.

 

[Michael Bednarek]

Hi;
I just added an extra HD to my WinMe machine, partitioned it as 3 drives
(D, E, F) and installed XP as a dual boot system on D. Now it's time to
start installing my applications. I want to take a snapshot of the registry
before and after each install and then run FC (File Compare) on the
snapshots and keep a running list of what keys were added/altered by each
program (I've found that alot of apps like NAV and Adobe Reader leave junk
all over the place when uninstalled/upgraded).

The question is "Where did the registry go?". I had assumed that XP would
have its' own registry in D:\Windows but can't find a USER.DAT or SYSTEM.DAT
anywhere on the D drive. Is NTUSER.DAT the equivalent of USER.DAT? If yes,
then what's the equivalent of SYSTEM.DAT? I've searched the D drive for
files containing HKEY_USERS and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE with no luck. Is XP
relying on the files back in the WinMe partition and if so, am I forever
stuck with keeping WinMe in order to keep those files?
Any help/enlightment would be greatly appreciated.

As you suspect, the users' registry hives are stored in
%HOMEDRIVE%\%HOMEPATH%\NTUSER.DAT. The system hives are in
%SystemRoot%\system32\config. I believe they are SYSTEM, SOFTWARE,
SECURITY, and SAM. You don't want to mess with them. Use REGEDIT
or other registry editing tools.

HKEY_USERS and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE are registry keys, not file names.

The XP installation doesn't know anything about the ME registry - they
are incompatible; otherwise you wouldn't have to re-install your
applications.

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

NT OS's are not like 9x OS's, therefore the registry is made up as follows:
Each user has their own, user part of the registry is located:

%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\<user_profile_name>\NTUSER.DAT

The system part of the registry is located:
%SystemRoot%\System32\config as files:
system
software
security
SAM

Also, as others have stated, Symantec and a few others make software to
track registry changes, but what I do is use a freeware package call "ERUNT"
to backup and if needed restore the registry (provide the Ghost copy from my
weekly backup is not sufficient). Their webpage is:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/
--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your service

*************************************************

Thanks Jerry, I dl'ed RegMon last night and it looks like it might do
what
I want. That still doesn't answer my questions, though. Where does the
XP
registry live and will I have to keep WinMe around just to keep the
UER.DAT
and SYSTEM.DAT files?
Thanks again for any help you can give.

 

[George J. Wallace]

I want to thank all of you very much for taking the time to answer my
questions! I'd been holding off installing anything until I was sure I
could keep track of what was being added to the registry. Thank you for the
enlightenment.