moldboy
Technical User
- Sep 10, 2003
- 87
What is the user.dat file and how can I view it so that it makes sense?
Help is greatly apprieacted
Help is greatly apprieacted
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user.dat what is 2
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More elaborate, the user.dat is the part of a users profile where a lot of his/her Windows settings are saved, such as background, screensaver etc. It is called user.dat in Windows 9x, but from there on it has been NTuser.dat. It is located in the user profile, so c:\documents and settings\<username>.
To read it, you can user regedit. Log in as the desired user and the entire HKEY_CURRENT_USER is the user.dat.
A trick to view/edit it without having to log in as the user it belongs to is to start regedt32, make HKEY_UERS or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE the active screen and click Registry -> Load hive. You can search the (nt)user.dat you want to view/edit and open it. Don't forget to unload the hive when you're done.
NOTE: I'm sure you have read this somewhere, but be VERY carefull when you edit the registry. It contains huge amounts of settings, often non-readable for an inexperienced person. Especially when using the trick with regedt32, which gives you a somewhat different interface you might not have seen before. Make a backup of your registry in regedit via Registry -> Export Registry File before making any changes.
To read it, you can user regedit. Log in as the desired user and the entire HKEY_CURRENT_USER is the user.dat.
A trick to view/edit it without having to log in as the user it belongs to is to start regedt32, make HKEY_UERS or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE the active screen and click Registry -> Load hive. You can search the (nt)user.dat you want to view/edit and open it. Don't forget to unload the hive when you're done.
NOTE: I'm sure you have read this somewhere, but be VERY carefull when you edit the registry. It contains huge amounts of settings, often non-readable for an inexperienced person. Especially when using the trick with regedt32, which gives you a somewhat different interface you might not have seen before. Make a backup of your registry in regedit via Registry -> Export Registry File before making any changes.
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