Registry Entries

I am logged on as the Administrator. There are other accounts on the machine. I look in the registry. I am the current user (makes sense). I look in HKEY-USERS and there is only one user listed there as well. By looking at the entries I can see that it is me also. There is also a default which apears to be the default for the Administrators group.

I would have expected to see the other users there (and the defaults for the other user groups). I assumed they were all there and it would take the user who logs in and designate that one as the current user. But not the case.

Where are the registry entries for the other users?

if you look in c:\docsumentsandsettings\ do you see other peoples profiles there? and do you have access to their folders?

yes, i can get to their folders with full access. and i can set security for them on any folder. but i want to tweak their registry entries.

it looks like their registry only loads if they're logged onto that computer, so if you were editing the registry remotely when someone is logged in that would work.

To open a users currentuser part of the registry, run regedt32.exe
click the top folder in hkeylocalmachine, click the registry menu, then click "load hive" and point it to the users ntuser.dat, which is in the users profile. I think when you are done you need to remember to close the hive instead of just closing regedt32

unfortunately - this is not a remote situation. i would like to be logged on as admin and change the other users registry.

if it only loads when the user is active, where does it load from? this is really a mystery.

it loads from the users ntuser.dat file (which is stored in their profile)

If they aren't logged in, then log in as an admin and do this
To open a users currentuser part of the registry, run regedt32.exe
click the top folder in hkeylocalmachine, click the registry menu, then click "load hive" and point it to the users ntuser.dat, which is in the users profile. I think when you are done you need to remember to close the hive instead of just closing regedt32

almost got there. when you say "in the ntuser.dat, which is in the users profile". . . where do i find that. i searched around the folders but no luck. I did a search on ntuser.dat and only found my own registry backup file.

C:\Documents and Settings\the_username\ntuser.dat

dat files are hidden, are you "showing all files"?

got it - yea - was not showing all files - duh!!!

thanks for the help.