Not For Beginners, Mandatory for Systems Administers

Not for the beginner or the faint of heart. The registry is that thing down at the bottom of the operating system that controls what the Windows XP operating system does.

Thankfully the first part of the book starts out with pretty basic information like what's in the registry. Then it discusses its structure, and begins to define some of those cryptic things like HKEY_USERS, and a bunch of other HKEY's. At the very least, the information in Part I is of interest and probably something that any fairly advanced user should know.

Part II gets into Registry in Management, this has chapters on Using Registry-Based Policy, Windows Security, Troubleshooting and so on.

Part III, Registry in Deployment is on using the registry to set up individual systems in a broad based deployment.

All in all, this is the most complete, best thought out book on the registry available. This is the second edition of the book on Windows XP, but it follows on previous books where Mr. Honeycutt described the registry on previous operating systems such as Windows 2000. His development of both understanding and the ability to describe that understanding is based on writing several previous books.

Other Reviews

• Text-Book.
• Lots of fluff, not much meat
• Microsoft Windows XP Registry Guide
• Not For Beginners, Mandatory for Systems Administers