How to restore and dump a windows registry without overwriting the current registry

Question

A GnuCash user has asked for help because they cannot find an old GnuCash data file. They have no idea where it was and a search has not found it. The location of the most recent GnuCash files are saved in HKCU in the registry. Assuming the user has some full backups from the time the file was being used, I wish to know if after restoring the Windows registry files (C:\Windows\System32\config...) to another location, it is possible to dump them to find out for sure where the file is or was.

Answer 1

You can use the Windows registry editor to load any other Registry hive into an arbitrary sub-key (you can also use the "reg load" command from command line. Then you can search this registry tree and export the keys you need to a .reg file. You might have to search/replace the key names in the resulting .reg file before importing that into the main registry, though.

Make a copy of the registry hive you’re loading, as regedit (or the windows registry in general) will probably modify it (by changing access times etc, not to speak of some mishap if you edit in it and delete/change some values unknowingly).