When a brand new profile is created for a user, where is the HKCU registry generated from? I want to place customizations in there so they are in affect the very first time the user logs in.

Win2K SP4 / WinXP Pro (Probably SP2 by the time we get to XP)

They are stored in the ntuser.dat file, but I'm not sure if you can edit it. You don't have to though, because you can apply registry tweaks for the default user from cmdlines.txt.

All right, cmdlines.txt is basically a bunch of single command line things to execute, so what does one toss in there to update the default user registry?

You can edit the default profile as shown here.

All right, cmdlines.txt is basically a bunch of single command line things to execute, so what does one toss in there to update the default user registry?

You just need to apply any .REG (regedit /S yourfile.reg) you want to be applied to that profile, at that stage. That's the simplest way to update the default user's registry.

No no, MHz got me exactly what I was looking for. Based on which apps get on the box, etc... I'd like to preconfigure various HKCU settings, thus I am long past cmdlines.txt by the time electronic software distribution kicks in.

I did notice at least on my Win2K the file menu was missing in Regedit, but RegEdt32 was able to load a hive, most odd. reg command line is even better for automation which that was provided as well.