Registry compare no remote access

[harveyab]

I have XP Pro networked to a XP Home (remote). I want to do reg compare, but cannot get access to remote registry. I can compare files and folders except \Windows and \Program Files on the remote XP Home PC. How do I configure to get this access? In general I would like to be able to compare anything on the two machines, including \Windows and \Program Files and the registry. I have tried to find the information on the web for full access, but it is either written for someone who already knows more than me, or it just doesn't work for me.
The (remote) XP Home PC is a wireless connected laptop. I could hardwire it if that makes any difference.
I most recently created an admin account on the Pro machine with the same name as the admin account on the remote PC. They are in the same workgroup and neither have a password.
Where do I start looking now?

[Aaron]

Hello,

You will need to enable the Service to share your registry:
Right click on "My Computer" and select Manage
Go to Services.
Start the "Remote Registry Service" and set it to automatic start.


You will also need to allow it past your Firewall. Are you using the XP Service Pack 2 firewall, or another brand?
In Vista, using the built-in Firewall:
Control Panel - Windows Firewall (Vista)
Exceptions.
Check "Remote Administration".

A wireless connection should be fine, assuming everything is on the same network.

[Aaron]

Also, my personal recommendation would strongly be to have passwords on any "administrator" level accounts. Just as a general practice.

[harveyab]

Well, my XP Home (laptop) PC does not have an entry for "Remote Registry" Service. The XP Pro PC does, and it was already set to start automatically. So I decided to do the compare from the Laptop. It loaded (after updating BC), but the only Root Keys showing (on either side) are HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS. And under these, on the remote side seems to be only a skeleton. Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE there is nothing, and under HKEY_USERS there is 8 subkeys that are all empty.
Should I see the other HKEY_s?
Should this work with an XP Pro and an XP Home?

[Aaron]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure about XP Home and if there are extra limitations because of it. For my testing, the OS (XP Pro, Win7, etc) has had the Remote Registry service available, and allows for remotely connecting and browsing the registry.

Not seeing HK_CURRENT_USER is expected, since that is just a shortcut displayed in RegEdit. The current user is one of the users under HKEY_Users. This way, the registry will compare userID to userID, and not show a bunch of differences if CurrentUser is different on either machine. I would expect it to show the full registry from the folders HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS. It was not showing everything when you were connecting from the XP Home machine to the XP Pro machine (with remote access enabled), correct?

[harveyab]

Right. Only the empty Skeleton as described. On the XP Home machine there is a full list as usual for the two HKEY_s mentioned. Six of the eight HKEY_USERS\ sub key names were the same on both sides but two were different on the two sides. If I remember correctly, the six that matched were:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-19_Classes
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-20_Classes
And the last two didn't match:
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1409082233-484061587-682003330-1008
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1409082233-484061587-682003330-1008_Classes

Any more ideas?

And for my other question; Is there a way to get Program Files and Windows directory trees to be visible across the LAN? I have tried to research this several times but without joy.

Thank you,

[harveyab]

Any comment? Was this helpful?

[Chris]

It's possible the user account on your XP Home machine doesn't have permissions to read the full registry on the XP Pro computer, but I don't know for sure. Here's an article that describes adding permission to access the registry for another user account: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...sional/5173421

As a workaround, you can save the registry to a .reg file on one of the computers, then copy it to the other computer and compare it in the Registry Compare that way.

If you have administrative rights for the remote computer running XP Pro, you can try accessing the administrative share for each drive letter \\computername\c$, \\computername\d$, etc. I don't know if administrative shares are supported on XP Home.

Here's an article on Windows XP Pro file sharing that might help:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...ring/index.htm