where are the registry files located on a windows machine
Windows Registry The Registry is physically stored in several files, which are generally obfuscated from the user-mode APIs used to manipulate the data inside the Registry. Depending upon the version of Windows, there will be different files and different locations for these files, but they are all on the local machine. The location for system Registry files in Windows NT isÂ %SystemRoot%\System32\Config; the user-specific HKEY_CURRENT_USER user Registry hive is stored in Ntuser.dat inside the user profile. There is one of these per user; if a user has a roaming profile, then this file will be copied to and from a server at logout and login respectively. A second user-specific Registry file named UsrClass.dat contains COM Registry entries and does not roam by default.