The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG Key

The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG registry root key was first introduced with the release of the Windows NT 4.0 operating system. This key contains configuration data for the currently used hardware profile. Actually, this key is an alias that references the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current registry key.

The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG registry key was introduced with the release of Windows NT 4.0 in order to provide backward compatibility with the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG root key present in Windows 95. Now that the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG tree is present both in Windows 9x and Windows NT/2000/XP/Windows Server 2003 registries, all applications designed for Windows 95 will also work under Windows NT-based operating systems.

Fig. 7.22 illustrates the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG registry key structure. This screenshot demonstrates that the HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG key simply represents a symbolic link to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current registry key.

Figure 7.22: The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current registry keys

The HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG key contains data describing the current hardware profile.