What is the Winxp registry file called?

What is the Winxp registry file called? Where is it located?

I want to edit this file in the control consol. Can I use a DOS editor to access the file in control consol?

you mean opening up the registry with the cmd promp REGEDIT?

it's just called Registry Editor; type "regedit" in your run dialog to fire it up

I mean the names of the actual files that are the registry. It used to be system.dat but that files doesn't exist on my winxp pro.

C:\Windows\System32\config

SAM
SECURITY
SYSTEM
SOFTWARE
DEFAULT

You will most likely break stuff if you edit these with anything but regedit, but have fun anyways!

Although I'm not quite sure what you're attempting to accomplish, to answer your question the XP registry is made up of the following files...

One NTUSER.DAT for each user on the machine, some templates and repair.
%HOMEDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\Administrator\NTUSER.DAT
%allusersprofile%\ntuser.dat
%HOMEDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\Default User\NTUSER.DAT
%HOMEDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\LocalService\NTUSER.DAT
%HOMEDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\NetworkService\NTUSER.DAT
%userprofile%\NTUSER.DAT
%windir%\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\systemprofile\NTUSER.DAT
%windir%\repair\ has these files...
default
ntuser.dat
sam
security
software
system

As DaBigJ already mentioned, all the hives are stored in %systemroot%\SYSTEM32\CONFIG, except HKEY_CURRENT_USER which is stored in %userprofile% or C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name Here.

The major hives and their files are as follows:

The paths are listed in this registry key...

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE | SYSTEM | CurrentControlSet | Control | hivelist

thanks redduc900, now can you edit those files and will the edit stick or are they protected and if so how to disable the protection?

orion456 said:

thanks redduc900, now can you edit those files and will the edit stick or are they protected and if so how to disable the protection?

Click to expand...

Well, I can't see any of the files in the config folder (but I know they exist). I can't see them even with "hide protected operating system files" off.

So I doubt you can open any of those with something like wordpad and make changes, thats too easy.

And I love how they call it a hive, lol.

Unsure of what you're trying to do as well, but you should be able to load the hive under the HKLM or HKU, give it a key name, make your changes, and then unload it.

/not responsible for what gets borked in the process though :]

Unless you're accessing another machines registry you just use regedit.

You can access those files when you are in the command consol. You can copy them and substitute backup files. I modified a single byte in one of those files and now windows will boot but can't find the user configuration files; so I want to modify it back. Unfortunately I made the modification under Windows and now that Windows won't finish booting I can't modify the files using regedit.

I can't believe that a single byte can render Windows useless. If that's true then Windows truely is a weak operating system; which it most probably is.

But the question is, can those files be modified under the command consol and will the modifications hold during a boot up. I have created a program to search and restore my change and it should run under the command consol.
Can the command consol see a floppy?

Boot to the Recovery Console, and perform the steps in the following MSKB article...

How to Recover from a Corrupted Registry that Prevents Windows XP from Starting:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=307545

A single byte... if you don't know what a single byte can do to a binary data structure, then you probably shouldn't be playing around with it at this level

You cannot edit any of the hives using a text editor, which it sounds like it's what you did. If that makes Windows weak in your book, then so be it. You could break an AVI file by editing it with a text editor as well; does that make the AVI format "weak"?

Use the link Redduc posted earlier. It works great as I've used it myself in the past. Hopefully you don't run with system restore disabled. If you oc a lot system restore can really be beneficial to you, as it's real easy to corrupt your registry with oc'ed ram or an unstably clocked Northbridge.