Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Advantages Offered by the Registry

The Registry offers a number of significant benefits to programmers, users, and administrators. These benefits stem from the characteristics just described.

It Keeps Everything Tidy

Instead of the dozens (or even hundreds) of separate INI files typically found on a Windows 3.1 machine, Windows NT/2000 machines usually only have a few, and those typically belong to 16-bit legacy applications that can’t use the Registry. Windows 2000 itself uses the Registry for its configuration data, as do almost all 32-bit applications written for Windows 9x and NT/2000. There’s more to tidiness than just the reduction in clutter that comes from eliminating INI files, though. Centralizing where configuration information is stored makes it easier for administrators to back up, restore, and secure the data.

It Provides Security

Access control for the Registry comes in two sizes. First, you can set individual workstations or servers to disallow any remote Registry connections. While this is secure, it also makes it impossible to use the System Policy Editor to set and inspect policies on that machine. A better and more fine-grained solution is to use the built-in ACL features. As I mentioned earlier, each Registry key, from the root keys on down, can have its own set of access permissions in the form of ACLs that apply to the keys.

Each access control entry (ACE) in an ACL actually has two parts: a permission (as shown in Table 1-1) and the account or group name ...