What is the difference between load and import registry in windows

Question

I was unable to find anything regarding this on net. What is generally difference between loading and importing registry in windows?

Answer 1

You load a registry "hive", that is to say a cold registry file on disk which is not "mounted" at the moment. An example would be the registry file for another user who is not logged on at present, if you wanted to read or write their HKEY_USER settings. Another example is changing the default settings for new users by loading and editing the /Users/Default registry hive, although there may be better ways to do this.

You import one or more registry keys and values, that is to say read settings into a part of the registry which is already mounted, like your own registry hive, or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.