Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Why Vista’s System Restore is Dangerous and What to do About it

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 Published by Helge Klein on December 19, 2007. 0 Comments

Recently a colleague of mine had a problem: by mistake he had deleted part of the software registry hive (HKLM\Software) of his Vista machine while trying out some code. When he asked me for help my first thought was to go back to the last System Restore point. But that seemed a bit harsh. It would have restored the registry settings in question. But not only that: System Restore not only captures and restores every single file in the windows directory, it also does that same for a lengthy list of file types on all volumes for which System Restore is enabled. Continue reading ‘Why Vista’s System Restore is Dangerous and What to do About it’

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Another IT Legend

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 Published by Helge Klein on December 11, 2007. 3 Comments

Some time ago I wrote about a misconception so common that it might pass as an IT legend – the confusion of HKU\.Default with the default user’s registry hive.

Recently I came across another interesting misapprehension. As you know, the profiles base directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings) contains not only one special sub-folder, Default User, but also All Users, whose purpose is well-known: When Explorer builds the start menu and the desktop it pulls entries both from the logged-on user’s profile and from the all users folder. Continue reading ‘Another IT Legend’

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