The Windows 2000 Registry is the repository for all hardware, software, and application configuration settings, and this is the system administrator's guide to maintaining, monitoring, and updating the Registry database. The book addresses four main areas: what is the Registry?; where does it live on disk?; how do system services access and use it?; and what do you do if it's damaged or corrupted?. Every 2000 administrator faces questions like this, often in a desperate attempt to fix something that's broken.

Table of Contents:
A gentle introduction to the Registry - a brief history of the Registry, what does the registry do?, advantages offered by the registry, registry Zen; registry nuts and bolts - how the Registry is structured, what goes in the Registry, getting data in and out; in case of emergency - don't panic!, safety strategies, all about emergency repair disks, backing up the Registry, restoring a backed-up Registry; using RegEdit know your limitations - learning the RegEdit interface, "Just Browsing, Thanks", connecting to other machines' registries, searching for keys and values, printing registry contents, working with keys and values, exporting and importing, data RegEdit command-Line options; using RegEdt32; how Reg Edt32 and RegEdit differ; learning the RegEdt32 interface; browsing with RegEdt32; remote registry editing; searching for keys; saving and loading registry keys; printing registry contents; editing keys and values; registry security fundamentals securing Registry Keys in Windows 2000, securing registry Keys in Windows NT; using the system - policy editor, all about system policies, introducing the system policy editor, managing policies with POLEDIT, distributing policies, what's in the standard policy, picking the right policies; using group policies - what are group policies?, introducing the group policy, snap-in, managing policies distributing policies, what's in the standard policy templates?, picking the right policies; using group policies - what are group policies?, introducing the group policy, snap-in, managing policies, distributing policies, what's in the standard policy templates?; programming with the Registry - the Registry API, the shell utility API routines, programming with C/C++, programming with Perl, programming with Visual Basic; administering the Registry - setting defaults for new user, accounts, using initialization file mapping, limiting remote registry access, fixing Registry security ACLs in Windows NT, adding registry ACLs to group policy objects, encrypting HKLM/SAM with SYSKEY, miscellaneous good stuff, using the resource kit registry utilities, reg: the one-size-fits-all, registry tool, spying on the Registry with RegMon; Registry tweaks - user interface tweaks, filesystem tweaks, security tweaks, performance tweaks network, tweaks, printing tweaks; the Registry documented - what's here and what's not HKLM\HARDWARE, HKLM\SOFTWARE, HKLM\SYSTEM, HKU, HKCR, HKCU, HKCC, HKDD; user configuration group policy objects; computer configuration group policy objects.