From time to time, I found myself needing to know weird things – such as where a certain registry hive is located so I can edit the hive offline. I decided to finally make a list of where to find these registry hives.
- Default User: C:\Users\default\NTUSER.DAT
- User: C:\Users\{username}\NTUSER.DAT
- System: C:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM
- Software: C:\Windows\System32\config\SOFTWARE
- Security: C:\Windows\System32\config\SECURITY
- Drivers: C:\Windows\System32\config\DRIVERS
Interesting fact that I found is that the registry actually has a list of all the hives on that machine:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\hivelist
Please keep in mind that editing any of these files can permanently your Windows installation and to use caution!
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