Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide (Bpg-Other)

Most of the terminology I use in this book is fairly standard by now, but to avoid confusion, I'll take a moment to describe how I use some of it.

Rather than give you hardcode paths, I use the standard environment variables that represent those paths instead. That way, when you read the instructions, you'll be able to apply them to your scenario regardless of whether you're using a dual-boot configuration or where on your computer user profiles exist (C:\Documents and Settings or C:\Winnt\Profiles). Additionally, on your computer, the folder that contains Windows XP's system files might be in a different location depending on whether you upgraded to Windows XP, installed a clean copy of the operating system, or customized the installation path in an answer file. Thus, I use the following environment variables throughout this book. (You can see these environment variables by typing set at an MS-DOS command prompt.)

• %USERPROFILE% represents the current user profile folder. Thus, if you log on to the computer as Jerry and your profile folders are in C:\Documents and Settings, you'd translate %USERPROFILE% to C:\Documents and Settings\Jerry.

• %SYSTEMDRIVE% is the drive that contains Windows XP's system files. That's usually drive C, but if you installed Windows XP on a different drive, perhaps in a dual-boot configuration, it could be drive D, E, and so on.

• %SYSTEMROOT% is the folder containing Windows XP. In a clean installation, this is usually C:\Windows, but if you upgraded from Windows NT or Windows 2000, it's probably C:\Winnt.

Aside from the environment variables, I also use abbreviations for the various root keys in the registry. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE are unwieldy, for example, and cause lines to wrap in funny places. To make the book more readable, I use the following instead: