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HKU\.DEFAULT and NTUSER.dat How they are related, and updated Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   bigfatroundguy 

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Posted 06 July 2006 - 06:02 AM

I have been spending some time trying to load RunOnce located in HKU\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion in an effort to tweak what I thought was the Default User Profile. I was trying to have certain activities occur as each new user gets created. I have been trying to do this logged on as an administrator. No matter what I have tried, nothing has worked. Upon further research, I have discovered that HKU\.DEFAULT, being capitalized is a hive, is located at %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\config\default and that the Default User Profile is NTUSER located at %SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User and that is in fact the file I should be tweaking. I have learned to tweak it using the REG LOAD and REG UNLOAD approach. Using this approach I have succeeded, however, I remain a little confused.

So here is my question(s) are the two "default profiles" actually related? If so, how? Does one update the other and if so, when? Should I every try and tweak HKU\.DEFAULT?


#2 User is offline   Mr Snrub 

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Posted 06 July 2006 - 06:42 AM

HKCU\.DEFAULT is the LOCAL SYSTEM user profile hive, as it doesn't have a profile on disk to pull NTUSER.DAT from.
You don't want to go messing in there really.

#3 User is offline   Takeshi 

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Posted 06 July 2006 - 06:14 PM

This is an unattended Windows question and has been covered before in that forum:

here

#4 User is offline   bigfatroundguy 

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Posted 06 July 2006 - 08:30 PM

Thank you Takeshi, that was a very helpful pointer

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