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The Widows 98 Registry, A Survival Guide For Users
by By John Woram Reviewed by: Ross Wheeler—NOCCC , ifog2@earthlink.net - April 20, 2000 at 18:29:42:
The title of this book is slightly misleading because the registry for both the Windows 95 and Windows 98 operating systems is thoroughly described and their differences are fully explained. This is a complex subject but the author, John Woram, has written a previous edition entitled “The Windows 95 Registry” and with this foundation to build on, he produced a book that serves both communities of users.This book is well suited for the dedicated registry hacker but the average computer user will find it has more information about the registry then he/she would ever want to know. It contains the gems that every computer user should know but it takes some filtering effort to extract them. Fortunately, the search effort is made less arduous because a good table of contents and an equally good index has been included. In addition, the author has done an excellent job of unscrambling the registry jargon and microspeak language of Microsoft, which to most of us is almost indecipherable.
This book will be a valuable resource for those adventurous souls who have the courage to edit the registry. It provides the cautions and identifies the pitfalls in doing this tricky task and helps avoid the ultimate fall back of reformatting and reinstalling everything. This is emphasized by one of the author’s cardinal rules “don’t even think about editing the registry without having a good backup of it.” And, of course one must know where to find the thing and how to back it up and equally important how to restore it. The author has done an outstanding job of describing the tools and techniques for doing this. For example, he describes how to use the utility CFGBACK.EXE that is available on the Windows 95 CD, which can make nine separate copies of the registry and can be used to select any one and restore it. This is a great tool because Windows 95 makes only one backup copy of the registry each time the computer is booted and it overwrites the previous copy. There is a chance that a corrupted copy is being saved. Windows 98 makes a running set of five registry backups, creating a new backup each day, overwriting the oldest. In case the registry becomes corrupted windows tries to restore the last good copy but if that fails one can do a manual restore by booting to DOS and typing the command SCANREG /RESTORE. A list of the last four copies with their creation date is displayed and one can select a previously good copy and have it restored.
Considerable attention is given to the REGEDIT.EXE function, which is a primary registry analysis and editing tool. The author points out an interesting quirk of this tool, it has no undo function. If you make a change and, whoops, you want to go back, good luck buddy, you must remember exactly what you did so you can edit out the change—or, get your registry backup and restore it. Another free Microsoft register editing tool that is quite popular, TWEAK UI, is also described in detail. Two chapters are devoted to troubleshooting techniques and error message interpretation. A large section of one chapter is devoted to the use of the POLEDIT.EXE, routine (the policy editor). This is also available on the Windows CD and is the tool used to establish and control restrictions to the computer configuration. And it is frequently used by system administrators. Chapter six is devoted to custom registry editing techniques, that is, reconfiguring menus, the desktop, etc. and features which are not editable through the control panel.
Everyone who wants the comfort of having the means to restore their configuration without doing a complete system restoration from a backup media will profit by employing some of the techniques described by the author. In addition, those that have the inclination to custom configure their system well beyond the norm will find this book to be very useful.
The author of The Windows 98 Registry is John Woram and the publisher is MIS Press, Foster City, California, 94404. It has 446 pages and the list price is $24.99 and is available at a local store for $21.20.
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