Professional Windows® Embedded Compact 7

WINDOWS EMBEDDED COMPACT REGISTRY

Windows Embedded Compact registry stores configuration data and settings for the OS, device drivers, applications, and user preferences. The registry plays a key role in controlling a Compact 7 device’s device drivers and applications’ loading process during startup.

Compact 7 registry stores data in a tree structure. Each branch of the tree is called a registry key. Each registry key may contain other registry subkeys and entries. Each registry entry has a value, which can be a string or binary value. The registry data is stored in the registry entry. Think of the registry key and subkeys as the file folders for registry data, which also provide the marker and grouping to store and identify the registry entry.

Windows Embedded Compact registry contains the following four root keys:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT stores information about file types.
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER stores user data for the current active user.
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE stores data specific to the hardware platform, such as OS configuration, device drivers, and settings.
• HKEY_USERS stores data for all users including the default user.

Windows Embedded Compact supports two different types of registry implementation, RAM-based and hive-based registry.

RAM-Based Registry

The RAM-based registry implementation stores registry data within the objectstore. The objectstore functions similar to the hard drive for the desktop PC and provides storage support for the device’s file system, databases, and system ...