Working with the Windows Home Server Registry : Working with Registry Entries - Changing the Value of a Registry Entry

Now that you’ve had a look around, you’re ready to start working with the Registry’s keys and settings. In this section, I’ll give you the general procedures for basic tasks, such as modifying, adding, renaming, deleting, and searching for entries.

Changing the Value of a Registry Entry

Changing the value of a Registry entry is a matter of finding the appropriate key, displaying the setting you want to change, and editing the setting’s value. Unfortunately, finding the key you need isn’t always a simple matter. Knowing the root keys and their main subkeys, as described earlier, will certainly help, and the Registry Editor has a Find feature that’s invaluable. 

To illustrate how this process works, let’s look at an example: changing your registered owner name and company name. In other versions of Windows, the installation process often asks you to enter your name and, optionally, your company name. These registered names appear in several places as you work with Windows:

• If you select Help, About in most Windows programs, your registered names appear in the About dialog box.

• If you install an application, the installation program uses your registered names for its own records (although you usually get a chance to make changes).

Unfortunately, Windows Home Server doesn’t ask you for this data. Instead, it uses the generic values Owner for the owner name and Organization for the organization name.

With these names appearing in so many places, it’s good to know that you can change either or both names. The secret lies in the following key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion

To get to this key, you open the branches in the Registry Editor’s tree pane: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and then SOFTWARE, and then Microsoft, and then Windows NT. Finally, click the CurrentVersion subkey to select it. Here you see a number of settings, but two are of interest to us (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion to see your registered names.

Now you open the setting for editing by using any of the following techniques:

• Select the setting name and either select Edit, Modify or press Enter.
  
  
• Double-click the setting name.
  
  
• Right-click the setting name, and click Modify from the context menu.
  
  

The dialog box that appears depends on the value type you’re dealing with, as discussed in the next few sections. Note that edited settings are written to the Registry right away, but the changes might not go into effect immediately. In many cases, you need to exit the Registry Editor and then either log off or restart Windows Home Server.

Editing a String Value

If the setting is a REG_SZ value (as it is in our example), a REG_MULTI_SZ value, or a REG_EXPAND_SZ value, you see the Edit String dialog box, shown in Figure 2. Use the Value Data text box to enter a new string or modify the existing string, and then click OK. (For a REG_MULTI_SZ multistring value, Value Data is a multiline text box.) Type each string value on its own line.

Editing a DWORD or QWORD Value

If the setting is a REG_DWORD, you see the Edit DWORD (32-Bit) Value dialog box shown in Figure 3. In the Base group, select either Hexadecimal or Decimal, and then use the Value Data text box to enter the new value of the setting. (If you chose the Hexadecimal option, enter a hexadecimal value; if you chose Decimal, enter a decimal value.) Note that editing a QWORD value is identical, except that the dialog box is named Edit QWORD (64-Bit) Value, instead.

Editing a Binary Value

If the setting is a REG_BINARY value, you see an Edit Binary Value dialog box like the one shown in Figure 4.

For binary values, the Value Data box is divided into three vertical sections:

Editing a .reg File

If you exported a key to a registration file, you can edit that file and then import it back into the Registry. To change a registration file, find the file in Windows Explorer, right-click the file, and then click Edit. Windows Home Server opens the file in Notepad.

Creating a .reg File

You can create registration files from scratch and then import them into the Registry. This is a handy technique if you have some customizations that you want to apply to multiple systems. To demonstrate the basic structure of a registration file and its entries, Figure 5 shows two windows. The bottom window is the Registry Editor with a key named Test highlighted. The settings pane contains six sample settings: the (Default) value and one each of the five types of settings (binary, DWORD, expandable string, multistring, and string). The top window shows the Test key in Notepad as an exported registration file (Test.reg).

Figure 5. The settings in the Test key shown in the Registry Editor correspond to the data shown in the Test.reg file in Notepad.

Windows Home Server registration files always start with the following header:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

REGEDIT4

Next is an empty line followed by the full path of the Registry key that will hold the settings you’re adding, surrounded by square brackets:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Test]

Below the key are the setting names and values, which use the following general form:

"SettingName"=identifier:SettingValue

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Test]
"BinarySetting"=-

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00


[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Test]

Renaming a Key or Setting

You won’t often need to rename existing keys or settings. Just in case, though, here are the steps to follow:

Creating a New Key or Setting

Many Registry-based customizations don’t involve editing an existing setting or key. Instead, you have to create a new setting or key. Here’s how you do it:

Deleting a Key or Setting

Here are the steps to follow to delete a key or setting: