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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeuspaul who wrote (7603)	5/24/1999 10:48:00 PM
From: Spots	Respond to of 14778

Holy batshit, Catman, a dozen or so feet to the yard is about all I can handle at once <g>. Let's take this a bit at a time, here. >> Is the registry a file? Can it be backed up by copying it to another location? Does it have to reside in a specific sector/location on the harddrive? Is it always open? This reminds me of a cartoon I kept on the fridge for quite a while. This boy, say 6, is at the kitchen table talking to his mother. The caption, kid talking, goes something like this: "Curiosity killed the cat? What cat? What was it curious about? What was it's name? How did it die? How many lives does it have left? Can I go see that cat? Where does it live? ... " In truth it put me in mind of myself when I was 6 <gg>. Ok, one at a time now: 1. Is the registry a file? The registry is a set of files, most of which are in <Winnt>\System32\config. All of the system-controlled keys are there (known as "hives", as in bees or what you get from an allergic reaction). The various "keys" you see in Regedit correspond only roughly to the hives. I wouldn't want to try to explain the relationships right now (take too long) even if I remembered it all, which I don't. When NT is active, the currently logged on user has a registry component open in his profile directory (eg, I log on as Spots, I have a registry component file named <Winnt>\Profiles\Spots\Ntuser.dat The registry key HKEY_USERS is the union of the individual user hives, if I recall correctly. The registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER is the sub-hive of the current user, the one that is currently open when NT is active. 2. Can it be backed up by copying it to another location? Yes and no. NT doesn't allow copying the hive files while NT is active. However, there is a privilege (Backup operator) which is supposed to allow backing up an open registry. I may have this wrong; I have not investigated it, though I keep meaning to find the time. Normal users, including Admins, can't back it up from an active partion. There are, however,ways to back up the registry. The simplest is to make an emergency repair disk (run rdisk from the command line). You don't even have to actually make the disk, just running rdisk makes a backup of the registry in <Winnt>\repair. An image of this directory is what goes on the emergency repair disk. This backup is a compressed version of the hives, including all the users (there's an rdisk switch to include all the security hives, /s I think). You can also back up the registry of an inactive NT simply by backing up <Winnt>\System32\config plus all of the individual user hive parts. With this backup you can restore the registry of the backed-up NT by replacing the have files. 3. Does it have to reside in a specific sector/location on the harddrive? Nope. Files in the file system, like any other file. System files, not normally accessible when NT's active, but normal files just the same. 4. Is it always open? Yes, when NT's active. See above. >>In the event of NT1 failure could one take the second drive..recable it to the first drive position and have a working clone of the first drive? I'm going to skip over some of your questions in the interest of preserving my sanity (what dregs there are left) and bedtime. IF you had maintained the clone exactly, you could probably recable it to appear as the first drive and boot it IF (great big if) the reset of the environment were maintained. You would also probably have to boot it once, change it's drive letter to the original, and boot it again. If you'll go back and read my post carefully about my disk configuration, I think you'll see that I cloned C to G, recabled to make G appear in the place of C and rebooted. G still came up as "G" in the "C" position, even though it had never been booted before (it was a newly formatted disk). Conclusion: NT keeps the drive letters somewhere else besides the registry. This is probably post-SP3. But I can't emphasize that EVERYTHING else would have to be the same, or you're hosed. I must stop this now. Too much carousing on SI and buy.com to all hours lately <ggg>. Read these answers and reask the remaining questions, please. Spots