4: Hacking the Registry in VS .NET

Draw DataMatrix in VS .NET 4: Hacking the Registry

This chapter covers hacking the registry to make Microsoft Windows XP look and feel the way you want. Rather than showing you how Windows XP organizes the registry, which is covered in the chapters in Part IV, "Appendices," I'll show you the brute force hacks that immediately change the way you use Windows XP. To make these customizations easier, I've included scripts for many of them. Download these and new scripts at http://www.honeycutt.com. I use the term hack loosely. These aren't security hacks or hacks that give you more features than you're supposed to have. By no means am I helping you hack product activation. These are hacks that help you customize the operating system in ways that you can't through its user interface. For example, this chapter helps you customize the shortcut menus and the icons you see in the user interface and change how Windows XP behaves. It even describes how you can automatically log on to Windows XP, bypassing the Log On To Windows dialog box. You'll find some of these hacks on various Web sites and FAQs, but hopefully I'm giving you many new ones that you won't find anywhere else. These hacks are for power users. If you're looking for customizations with an IT flavor, see 15, "Working Around IT Problems," which has customizations that help IT professionals deploy Windows XP and solve particular IT problems. But even though the chapter you're reading now is end user oriented, IT professionals might find that its customizations are a good fit for their enterprise users, and professionals can deploy those customizations in a variety of ways, including default user profiles, policies, and scripts. For example, IT professionals frequently ask me how to simulate IntelliMirror features like Folder Redirection without using policies, and the first hack shows you how to do just that.

Special folders include the My Documents, My Pictures, and Favorites folders, among many others. Table 4 1 shows the special folders that Windows XP creates after a fresh installation and their default paths. The first column contains each folder's internal name as Windows XP and other programs know it. The second column contains each folder's default path, which almost always starts with %USERPROFILE%, making these folders part of each user's profile folder. 10, "Deploying User Profiles," describes these user profile folders in depth. Table 4 1: Special Folders Name AppData Cache Cookies Desktop Favorites History Local AppData Local Settings Default path %USERPROFILE%\Application Data %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files %USERPROFILE%\Cookies %USERPROFILE%\Desktop %USERPROFILE%\Favorites %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\History %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings 78

%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Pictures %USERPROFILE%\NetHood %USERPROFILE%\My Documents %USERPROFILE%\PrintHood %USERPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs %USERPROFILE%\Recent %USERPROFILE%\SendTo %USERPROFILE%\Start Menu %USERPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup %USERPROFILE%\Templates

Users might want to redirect special folders for a variety of reasons, but two come to mind. The first is to redirect the My Documents folder to a different volume. For example, users might redirect My Documents to drive D so they can reinstall Windows XP on drive C without losing their documents. The second scenario is when users have a network and want to access their documents from more than one computer. In that case, they can redirect both their My Documents and Favorites folders to a network location so they have access to them from anywhere. IT professionals frequently want to redirect My Documents to a network location, too, which makes backing up users' documents easier. This can be done with the IntelliMirror feature Redirected Folders. IT professionals can't use IntelliMirror features without Active Directory, but they can simulate Redirected Folders. 15, "Working Around IT Problems," shows how to use this hack in that scenario. HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders is the key where Windows XP stores the location of per user special folders. Each value in this key is a special folder as shown in Table 4 1. These are REG_EXPAND_SZ values, so you can use environment variables in them. Use %USERPROFILE% in a path to direct the folder somewhere inside users' profile folders or %USERNAME% in a path to include users' names. To redirect users' Favorites folders to the network, set the value Favorites, which you looked up in Table 4 1, to \\ Server \ Share \%USERNAME%\Favorites, where \\ Server \ Share is the server and share containing the folders. The next time the user logs on, Windows XP updates a second key, HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion \Explorer\Shell Folders, with the paths from User Shell Folders, so you don't have to update it. In fact, Microsoft's documentation says Windows XP doesn't use Shell Folders. The following listing shows you how to redirect special folders automatically. Save this listing to the text file Redirect.inf and replace the string PERSONAL with the location where you want to redirect the My Documents folder. (Use environment variables so the script works for all users.) Do the same for the strings FAVORITES, PICTURES, and APPDATA. To configure these settings, right click Redirect.inf, and then click Install. 9, "Scripting Registry Changes," shows you other ways to deploy these settings. You can uninstall this script using Add Or Remove Programs. Listing 4 1: Redirect.inf

[ Version] Signature=$CHICAGO$ [DefaultInstall] AddReg=Reg.Settings AddReg=Reg.Uninstall CopyFiles=Inf.Copy [DefaultUninstall]

DelReg=Reg.Settings DelReg=Reg.Uninstall DelFiles=Inf.Copy [Reg.Settings] HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ \User Shell Folders,AppData,0x20000,"%APPDATA%" HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ \User Shell Folders,Personal,0x20000,"%PERSONAL%" HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ \User Shell Folders,My Pictures,0x20000,"%PICTURES%" HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell \ Folders,favorites,0x20000,"%FAVORITES%" [Reg.Uninstall] HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%NAME% HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ \%NAME%,DisplayName,,"%NAME%" HKCU,Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\%NAME%,UninstallString\ ,,"Rundll32.exe setupapi.dll,InstallHinfSection DefaultUninstall 132"\ "%53%\Application Data\Custom\Redirect.inf" [Inf.Copy] Redirect.inf [DestinationDirs] Inf.Copy=53,Application Data\Custom [SourceDisksNames] 55=%DISKNAME% [SourceDisksFiles] Redirect.inf=55 [Strings] NAME APPDATA PERSONAL PICTURES FAVORITES DISKNAME

= = = = = =

"Jerry's Redirect Folders" "\\Server\Folders\%USERNAME%\Application Data" "\\Server\Folders\%USERNAME%\My Documents" "\\Server\Folders\%USERNAME%\My Documents\My Pictures" "\\Server\Folders\%USERNAME%\Favorites" "Setup Files"

Note The special folders in this section are per user and exist within users' profile folders. Windows XP also lists per computer special folders in HKLM. Examples of per computer folders include Common AppData, Common Desktop, and Common Documents. It's not as useful to customize per computer folders, however. Regardless, the same rules apply. Change the location of the folder in User Shell folders; Windows XP automatically updates Shell Folders.