Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Saving and Loading Registry Keys

RegEdt32 allows you to dump Registry data into ordinary files that you can back up or use on other machines. You can save data in binary and text formats, and you can reload binary data when you need it again. The text format has the advantage of being human-readable, but the binary format is more efficient and is the only one RegEdt32 can import. (For more details on using this capability to back up your Registry, see Chapter 3.)

RegEdt32 normally deals with the hive files stored in %systemroot%\system32\Config. However, you can also create your own files that contain just the keys and values you want. Once you’ve created such a file, you can load it back to its original location or anywhere else in the Registry. You can also use the file on another machine’s Registry.

Saving Keys

To create a binary file of Registry data, just select the key or subkey you want to save, then use RegEdt32’s Registry→Save Key command. When the standard Save dialog appears, specify a filename, and RegEdt32 stores the selected key’s contents (as well as those of its subkeys) to the file (as long as you have adequate permission to read the key, its subkeys, and their values). The completed file is an ordinary file, so you can copy it to floppy, email it, or handle it just like any other kind of document.

There’s no way to combine more than one key in a file unless they have a common parent. If you want to capture web browser settings from your local machine, you ...