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Possible Duplicate:
Where is the Windows Registry Files stored?

I want to know where is registry stored in windows 7? I don't want to open it with regedit. I want the actual files and way to open them(because most of the time file formats are strange).

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narayanpatra
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    You really _really_ shouldn't be opening Registry hives with anything other than the registry editor, `regedit.exe`. Anything else is liable to break your entire system beyond any hope of repair. – nhinkle Dec 23 '10 at 22:02
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    I don't understand why this was migrated from StackOverflow, since it seems not only the locations but the formats are desired, and the format is definitely a programming question. – Mark Ransom Dec 23 '10 at 22:10
  • Second part of the question is related to programming. I also can't understand why they migrated it here. – narayanpatra Dec 25 '10 at 18:46

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They are called registry hive files. They are (mostly) located in the %SystemRoot%\System32\Config directory. Much more info available in the MSDN.

Note: I would not touch these files with an infinitely long pole.

zdan
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    I predict a question sometime soon along the lines of, "Help... I've corrupted my registry and now Windows won't start!" :p – Andrew Barber Dec 23 '10 at 21:41
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    HKCU is stored in `%Userprofile%\NTUser.dat`, though – Joey Dec 23 '10 at 21:46
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    I second this motion "Note: I would not touch these files with an infinitely long pole." – brandon927 Dec 23 '10 at 21:54
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    No problem touching them, as long as it's read-only. – Mark Ransom Dec 23 '10 at 22:10
  • There's a separate file for `HKCU\Software\Classes` too. (No idea where on W7, though.) – u1686_grawity Dec 24 '10 at 13:07
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    The cautionary statements are well taken, but there certainly are cases where it is desirable to access these hive files. For example, you might have the hard drive of a defunct computer, and you need to recover (read-only) some data from the old registry without actually booting Windows from the hard drive. Or you need to access it from a Linux box. What you do with that data afterwards is another matter... – LarsH Oct 10 '13 at 20:44
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    @grawity, HKCU\Software\Classes registry hive is stored in %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.dat. Windows 7 and 8 both, I believe. – Baodad May 16 '14 at 14:31