Access another user's HKEY_CURRENT_USER Registry branch

Solution 1:

you can use regedit for this. Open regedit and select HKEY_USERS then go to File->Load Hive. Browse to the users Hive file, usually NTUSER.DAT located at %userprofile%.

This of course requires you to be admin or have access to the users hive file.

Solution 2:

If you are looking to do a basic profile copy, I prefer using the user profile copy feature in windows XP. To do this you will need two accounts. I usually use my own account and a generic local admin account. You first configure your own account with all the registry settings and fixes you want. Then, restart your computer (to force all programs to release control of the ntuser.dat file) and log into the generic admin account. Once into windows, right click on My computer and go to properties. Under the Advanced tab, you will see the "User Profile" section with a settings button. When you press that button, a list of all locally stored profiles will come up. From here, you can copy one profile onto another. All you do is put in the location of the ntsuer.dat file "C:\Documents and Settings\exampleuser".

This tool works surprisingly well for how simple it is. I find it's a great way to implement default registry settings. You can copy your profile to the "default user" and then all future users will have those settings given to them. I usually use something like delprof to purge all users, copy my profile to default user, and then have other users log back on. Make sure to backup any locally stored data before you start.

It's a lot less dangerous then using regedit since you take a working profile and copy it. The main downside is that some programs still won't work correctly even after this. Though that is mainly due to badly designed code.

Hope this helps