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Number   :  5536
Date     :  2003-09-11
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Re: xxclone: can dst drive have other files on it?
Size(KB) :  3



J. Merrill wrote:



>> I knew someone would do this. Currently, XXCLONE assumes
>> that the profiles directory (\documents and settings\)
>>is in the same volume as the system volume.

> It is possible for the various items that are normally
> under "\documents and settings\" to be stored in various
> places, according to the info in the entries in the
> "Shell Folders" and/or "User Shell Folders" registry keys
> under
>
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
> CurrentVersion\Explorer\
>
> Are these treated differently just for backup purposes?

I guess there are redundant entries in the system registry
to locate the "Profile" directory (i.e., \Documents and Settings\").

XXCLONE uses various parts of the registry to locate the
"Profile" directory depending upon the context within the
clone operations.

For example, for the sake of the file-backup phase of the
operation (in Option 3 --- Windows Essential files where
the Windows (\windows\) and the "profile" (\Documents and Settings\)
files are copied, XXCLONE will lookup the "profile" directory
inside HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

On the other hand, in order to determine the final destination
of the registry files, it lookup a different place in HKLM\SYSTEM\
even though the destination directory is almost always inside
the same \Documents and settings\ directory.

Since these two cases do not involve the Explorer at all,
XXCLONE does not use the explorer's "Shell Folder" section
as noted by J. Merrill.

However, when XXCLONE needs to arrange for the double-reboot
procedure (in most cases, this is not necessary --- but the
current beta version (v.0.20.1) still uses this in NT4),
XXCLONE looks up the Explorer\Shell Folder key to determine
where to put the initial batch file to automatically launch
the XXCLONE.EXE program. The reason for this is that
Explorer is the program which handles the mechanism of
"autoexecuting" the contents in the StartUp directory.

I'm pretty sure that in over 99% of the cases, the system
registry contents for the \Documents and Settings\ location
for the various contexts are pointing to the same place,
we programmed it in this way --- just to make sure XXCLONE
would do reasonable things when something unexpected
happens. I guess these efforts are necessary for XXCLONE
to raise the "batting average" in the hostile world.

So, to answer the question, what if the \Documents and
Settings\ directory is kept in different places, XXCLONE
will probably do a reasonable thing. For example,
I'm pretty sure that you can probably use RegEdit to
change the place where \Documents and Settings\ will
point to (for the sake of the Explorer's dislay is
concerned). When this is done, my guess is that the
system registry files for the user (NTUSER.DAT, etc.) will
probably continue to be saved in the same old location
unless you change the hivelist entry in the registry
(I'm not sure what would happen if you change it
(if you can).

There may be a definitive set of documentation from
Microsoft on this question. But, Microsoft's knowledge
base articles are quite fragmented (just like our
technical bulettins :-( I just have not seen anything
authoritative from Microsoft about the various entries
for the "Profile" directories and the purpose of each
of the distinctive entries which looks redundant on
the surface.

Kan Yabumoto



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