Using Template Hives to Update the Registry

Three template hives are supplied with Windows NT 3.5. During a fresh installation, these hives are copied in their entirety to the new Registry. During an upgrade from an earlier version of Windows NT, portions of the template hives are copied to the existing Registry, as described in the text that follows.

If you are proficient with Regedit32, you can edit the template hives after you have copied them to your distribution share. This section explains how to specify that existing registry values be overwritten, and how to specify values in the template hives so that they do not overwrite existing information in the Registry. During a fresh installation, of course, the entire template hives are copied to the new Registry.

The following template hives are supplied:

Normally, values in the Software and Default template hives, and in the "Current Control Set" key of the System template hive, are copied to an existing Registry only if the value is not found in the existing Registry -- existing values are not overwritten. However, values in other keys of the System template hive are normally copied even if it means overwriting existing values. You can alter any of this behavior through entries in the TXTSETUP.SIF file.