John Fitzsimons said:
Well, I want to do a number of things. For example, sometimes during
upgrades my CD and/or DVD hardware doesn't install properly. Mainly
due to moving existing software and settings to the new drive.
In the past I solved the problem by installing the CD software on a
"clean" system and then importing the registry data, and files, to the
drive that didn't work.
This, I assume, by identifying and then exporting the appropriate reg
keys, when booted into the one drive, and saving those as a .reg to import
into the other?
I have to say, while I spend a great deal of time reviewing and reigning
in modifications made to my system by software, I have overall shied away
from doing anything on the technical level with hardware.
The hkey_current_config & hkey_dyn_data sections of the registry is an
area I don't often look at and almost never monitor. The sole exception
might be once or twice doing some reg deletes on those ghost entries
from hardware history, eg all monitors and printers that have ever been
attached, which default to hiding forever in the registry.
I have never tried to transport anything related to hardware. I'm one of
those who just kicks the jukebox instead; (ie reboot nine consecutive
times, muttering incantations and curses, until that final fluke instance
where plugpray chooses to do its business). There are fundamental things
about hardware settings I don't understand. For instance, I've no idea
whatsoever about the story on any of these files: drvdata.bin, drvidx.bin,
*.pnf, *.cat. (And lowlevel *.vxds, while I know what they are, and have
read the docs on the ways in which they place themselves into system
config, I handle them generally with industrial gloves, keeping my
distance when possible.)
So, on this part, your having imported successfully the registry entries
and drivers from one drive to another, you've crossed terrain that I have
not.
Suppose my "new" drive was "A" and a clean drive was "B". I would
ideally like to know what keys etc. are in the "B" system but aren't
in the "A" system.
I've been puzzling this out. The idea of comparing a _complete registry_
between one drive and another. I mean, because, consider how incredibly
massive the registry is. I sometimes look at a specific key, to see what
the earlier setting was, but had not much thought into comparing a whole
registry.
I mean, to start, just think of the fact that a registry printed out is
30,000,000 pages (whatever the number is? just extremely high). Then the
hassle of all those binary values. And that many of those binary values,
not only are not decipherable, but often enough enough of little material
significance; for example, the way explorer rewrites a binary value each
moment you even glance at an icon on your desktop.
Just for the heck of it, I did some drive to drive comparing, for report
here. My system has three primary partitions, w98 on each.
P1: w98 active
installed 3.5 yrs ago
P2: w98 tmp
same as P1, from which it was ghosted.
except the ghosting was a few weeks ago.
so it's P1 3 weeks earlier in time
P3: w98 ~virgin
installed ~month ago, usage less than 25 hrs
There were a couple of times where I'd been booted into the w98 virgin,
and accidently clicked the wrong INCTRL.lnk. Meaning that Inctrl had a
"before" shot from my big+old w98 registry, and was accidently being asked
to compare it with the w98-new registry. The number of changes was more
that Inctrl could handle -- it froze, turned white, collapsed to the
floor.
I expected then that there would also be failure doing a compare of the
old w98 with the virgin one, if I tried with any other program, including
Installwatch. That the barrier might even be the weakness of my machine,
if not the program. However, turns out Installwatch pulled it off. I did
minimize what I asked it to analyze; yet still I was surprised to see
success in getting any analysis.
Settings I used. To compare the registry only. Also, to keeps thing
civil, I asked it to not even bother looking at user.dat (which isn't
too important anyway, not the way system.dat is). In other words, I
told it to process only HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
The *.csv export of the registry differences, it has a file size
approaching 8 MB. I saved one *.reg file, a "before" shot (I forgot
to save an "after" shot). It's just over 1.1mb in size. There are a
couple of freeware *.reg file viewers available... Yet I can't find
any real use to look at this particular .reg file, not unless I was
hunting for data from a specific key.
The *.csv file, now while not suitable for any kind of import into the
registry obviously, at least it enjoys all the benefits of that format.
Despite the filesize, CSVdb opens it nicely, without even breaking
into a sweat. I can see using CSVdb to then toggle views, and delete
the fields that have more or less redundant information, plus delete
the entries that are fairly unimportant, until at last getting a
file offering some parsable/usable data. Data which one could have
as a reference bank when wanting to look into differences between
the two drives.
I also did a compare on my w98 active partition against P2, the
3-weeks-earlier image of it. This I've not bothered with exporting;
it was the one that had 3+ yrs difference held more curiosity to me,
to see how big the *.csv would come out. But let me do some numbers
in another way...
InstallWatch Report
3+ yr-old w98 install v a fairly new w98 install
5.3mb system dat v 2.3mb system.dat
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -
54451 registry entries added
5184 registry entries deleted
3400 registry entries updated
[2] w98 active partition today, as compared to 3-4 weeks ago
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE + HKEY_CURRENT_USER
8315 registry entries added
7700 registry entries deleted
1014 registry entries updated
Not only would I like to compare registries on different drives but on
the same drive at different time periods.
[...]
You see how there tends towards big numbers involved, a tremendous amount
of intricate data....
Actually, while I'm aware that I've gotten nowhere in addressing your
request, those numbers have now got me tired out. <g> I'm going to halt
(wherever it was I was headed on this) for a bit, take a rest (shower,
errands, etc), to come back to the reg-data subject later on.
