Registry Hive and Description

Registry Hive and Description

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  HKEY_CURRENT_USER Contains the root of the configuration information for the user who is currently logged on. The user's folders, screen colors, and Control Panel settings are stored here. This information is associated with the user's profile. This key is sometimes abbreviated as "HKCU."


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  HKEY_USERS Contains all the actively loaded user profiles on the computer. HKEY_CURRENT_USER is a subkey of HKEY_USERS. HKEY_USERS is sometimes abbreviated as "HKU."


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  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE Abbreviated as "HKLM." contains configuration information particular to the computer (affect all users).  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT abbreviated as "HKCR." is a subkey of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software and stores File Types along with associate program to open/edit/brose the files. Windows 2000 onwards HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER keys store the same information mentioned above. The HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes key contains settings that override the default settings and apply only to the interactive user. 


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  HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG Contains information about the hardware profile that is used by the local computer at system startup.

Registry Editing Tool

Windows Registry editing tools include both GUI and Console based tool. The GUI tools include REGEDIT.EXE and REGEDT32.EXE where as the console based tool include reg.exe. On a command prompt you may want to check the usage of the tool using REG/?. It can be used in batchfile to ADD/DELETE/QUERY/EXPORT OR IMPORT REGISTRY HIVES OR KEYS.