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  1. Renegade gll99's Avatar
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    May 2002
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    EDIT: This topic started as: How to safeguard the original registry because of risky editing but since I've been able to transfer Windows to a new hdd with only a small but risky registry edit and some free tools, I will add some info in subsequent posts on how it can be done. Maybe this will help someone who needs to change their hdd and don't want to reinstall XP and all their programs again-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Original Topic:
    I have edited the registry before so I'm pretty comfortable with this but before I do the some real heavy mucking with the registry using a software editor that permits multiple repeat changes of the same keys and values (not regedit) and which will involve lots of path changes etc.. I thought I would take some precautions

    1) I set a restore point. This is good if windows still boots ok but some registry entries are corrupt.

    2) I found a free program called erunt which apparently will let you restore the registry files from the backup folder of your choosing and according to review comments you can even do it when booting from dos or another windows boot disk. This is good if your registry boot info is corrupt and can't use the registry. It knows where the reg files belong. That sounds good to me.

    3) In XP the registry hive files are stored in the windows/system32/config folder. There are 5 files: Default, Sam, Security, Software, System (no extension). They can't be copied while in use unless I find an app that can safely copy in-use files, I plan to boot with something else and then manually save the config directory. As a fallback I could re-copy those files manually if they get corrupted.

    4) After writing step 3 above, I discovered that you can simply manually copy the 5 hive files from the system restore folder of the windows drive. This is the restore point I made in step1. Each restore point is kept by date and the hive files will be found in a folder called "snapshot". Manually restoring these 5 files will not reset everything but from what I've read it's close enough when a normal restore is not possible.

    Why all the precautions? Some time back I got nailed by a sick programmer who changed a lot of important registry keys. Left all the usual tools inaccessible. I couldn't right click, edit the registry, access the control panel, do searches etc... This guy also deleted all the system restore points and when I restored my system I had to go back to original settings from the very old "repair" folder backup. I wasn't too happy because it meant all my safety registry backups were useless because the hacker knew where the windows default locations are and just removed them.

    I can use this same manual backup method to hide a copy periodically where a hacker won't find them and I can restore them manually myself. Right now it's only to protect the registry from my stupidity in case I blow the changes I plan to make.

    I think all these backup sources should make it pretty foolproof but I may have missed something.

    Do you know of any other files that are affected by registry changes that I should know about before I play with it? Do you know of a registry editor that will let you choose the registry files from a different location rather than the active registry? This way I could edit a backup copy and just swap them instead when I temporarily boot from another os.

    btw) On the side topic of hackers and protection, I have all the protection software installed but giving access to updates to the registry when installing software is a common occurrence. All it takes is one sicko to take advantage by planting code which is neither virus nor trojan so it will never be caught beforehand. Unless you want to study and authorise every single registry and file change when running an install it's just too tedious so I'll opt for keeping secure backups of my own instead of worrying.
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  2. Renegade gll99's Avatar
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    May 2002
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    I found a couple more files that should be safeguarded since they might be affected by registry or configuration changes.

    USRCLASS.DAT
    NTUSER.DAT

    I have just swapped the boot and windows system hdd on my system and the registry backups really came in handy for a variety of reasons. My configuration was complicated by a previous boot disk failure on the windows disk so the boot and XP windows system were on separate disks, other issues like letter assignment vs registry paths and the need to keep an old 40GB hdd around to save my precious xp sp2 setup. I was finally able to oversome these problems without a need to re-install anything.

    I plan to document some of it here to help someone else who may be faced with this someday.
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