HKU\.DEFAULT and NTUSER.dat

[bigfatroundguy]

I have been spending some time trying to load RunOnce located in HKU\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion in an effort to tweak what I thought was the Default User Profile. I was trying to have certain activities occur as each new user gets created. I have been trying to do this logged on as an administrator. No matter what I have tried, nothing has worked. Upon further research, I have discovered that HKU\.DEFAULT, being capitalized is a hive, is located at %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\default and that the Default User Profile is NTUSER located at %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User and that is in fact the file I should be tweaking. I have learned to tweak it using the REG LOAD and REG UNLOAD approach. Using this approach I have succeeded, however, I remain a little confused.

So here is my question(s) are the two "default profiles" actually related? If so, how? Does one update the other and if so, when? Should I every try and tweak HKU\.DEFAULT?

[Mr Snrub]

HKCU\.DEFAULT is the LOCAL SYSTEM user profile hive, as it doesn't have a profile on disk to pull NTUSER.DAT from.

You don't want to go messing in there really.

[Takeshi]

This is an unattended Windows question and has been covered before in that forum:

here

[bigfatroundguy]

Thank you Takeshi, that was a very helpful pointer