Registry Management Tools

Hundreds of third-party and shareware registry tools are available. You learn about many of them throughout this book. Some tools I use more often than others, though, and here's an introduction to them:

  • Registry Editor. You learn about Registry Editor in Chaper 2, "Using Registry Editor." This is the primary tool you use to edit settings in the registry.

  • Console Registry Tool for Windows (Reg.exe). This command-line registry tool supports most of the capabilities of Registry Editor. The significance of this tool is that it allows you to script edits in batch files. For more information about Reg.exe, see Chapter 9, "Scripting Registry Changes."

  • WinDiff. This tool comes with the Windows XP Support Tools, which you install from \Support\Tools on the Windows XP CD. It's the best program I've found for comparing files, a useful technique for tracking down settings in the registry. For more information about using this tool, see Chapter 8, "Finding Registry Changes."

  • Microsoft Word 2002. This application might not seem like a registry management tool, but I use Word when WinDiff isn't available to compare files so I can figure out where a program stores a setting in the registry. I also use Word to edit scripts so that I can take advantage of its built-in version control and revision tracking features.

If you used the Windows 2000 Resource Kit tools, you'll notice the absence of tools from the Windows XP Resource Kit. The CD contains a copy of the kit's documentation and that's all. This is partially because Windows XP includes many of these tools, as does the Windows XP Support Tools (these are on your Windows XP CD in \Support\Tools). Most of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit tools still work well in Windows XP, and you can download many of them from Microsoft's Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/default.asp.

Note 

If you're looking for a particular type of tool that I don't discuss in this book, finding it is easy: Open the ZDNet Downloads site at http://downloads-zdnet.com.com in Internet Explorer, and then search for registry in the Windows category. The result is a list of hundreds of registry tools with a wide variety of special features, such as search and replace. Make sure that you download a program that works with Windows XP, though.



Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide
Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide (Bpg-Other)
ISBN: 0735617880
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 185

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