Who's who in the registry?

[maxXPsoft]

Since it has not yet been mentioned, what you should be doing is loading the individual users hives, (NTUSER.DAT), and editing them directly.

Actually Yzöwl I did mention but for some this would have been bad news as you know

You can load his Hive in XP and edit it from your profile but you must unload it afterwards. Learn a lot more before you attempt that though.

Oh, and can I make changes to the default user by editing the NTUSER.DAT file in C:/Documents and Settings/Default User?

Yes, but actually that is best done early on before you create any extra users. Then each setting you set will apply to all new users created. You could delete his account completely and then do that and re create his

EDIT: I want you to know that before you get too reg happy, make sure you have a way back. In other words know how to reinstall your OS or have an Acronis image you can restore or something.

Edited March 25, 2007 by maxXPsoft

[Idontwantspam]

Thanks for the info, maxXPsoft. I got more info on the loading of NTUSER.dat, etc, and have used it succesfully. It all seems to be working... I'm not planning on making too many more changes, I just wanted to some little things like disable registry editing for certain users, etc. My brother doesn't really know much of anything about computers, he probably doesn't even know what the registry is, but I figure who knows who might tell him to go do some certain thing "just because". Actually, the lack of knowledge is partially why I wanted to make some of these changes, since he could do some bad thing without even knowing he was doing it. I frequently get into conversations along the lines of "somethings wrong!" "what?" "i don't know." "well...". Also, I wanted this information for locking up the Guest account. I usually disable it, since I don't have many guests, but occasionally someone does need it, so I temporarily enable it. Now they can't change the display settings, go to certain places, or run tasks or edit the registry. I am still trying to find a way to hide the Shared Documents from them, since they don't need it and I don't want them there. Anyone know?

Thanks again everyone.

[maxXPsoft]

Remove Shared Documents Folder

delete this whole key, you'll never miss it

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\
NameSpace\DelegateFolders\{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}

Thats all one line but it stretched the page

Edited March 27, 2007 by maxXPsoft

[Idontwantspam]

Will that totally get rid of shared documents? Because that's not what I want to do. I just want to disallow access to it from certain accounts. I suppose what I could do is have a folder inside of shared docs with everything from shared docs in it, then apply permissions to that folder so that only certain accounts have "ownership" of it. I don't think you can apply permissions to system folders like Shared Documents, correct?

[Idontwantspam]

Well I found an easier way to do several of the mentioned things:

First off, to disable Shared Docs for one certain user:

HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\Explorer

make a DWORD VALUE NoSharedDocuments and set to one.

To see who is which SID:

HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\ProfileList

All the user SIDs are there, and you can see where the profile is stored, thus being able to tell who it is. E.g. if I see SID S-#-#-#-##########-#########-##########-1002 and see that it points to C:\Documents and Settings\Example, I know that's the user Example and his SID is the above. I have no idea if that's the right number of #s. Just an example.

[Idontwantspam]

New, easier way!

HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion/ProfileList

It has all the SIDs for users, as well as their profile path. It doesn't tell their username, but by seeing the path you can figure it out. For example, if the path is C:/Documents and Settings/Joe, the user is probably Joe. Could be handy.

Edited May 8, 2007 by Idontwantspam