Registry Policy File Format

Platform SDK: Group Policy

Registry Policy File Format

The Group Policy snap-in stores registry-based configuration settings in two Registry.pol files. One file contains computer settings and the other file contains user settings. The Group Policy snap-in saves the settings to these files on exit, and imports the settings on startup.

A Registry.pol file is a text file that consists of a header and a body. The header contains two DWORD values that indicate the file signature and version. These values are defined as follows.

Value	Definition
REGFILE_SIGNATURE	Defined as 0x67655250.
REGISTRY_FILE_VERSION	Initially defined as 1, then incremented each time the file format is changed.

The body consists of registry values in the following format.

[key;value;type;size;data]

key

Path to the registry key. Do not include HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the registry path. The location of the file determines which of these keys will be used.

value

The name of the registry value.

The following values have special meaning for this field.

Value Meaning

**DeleteValues A semicolon-delimited list of values to delete. Use as a value of the associated key.

**Del.valuename Deletes a single value. Use as a value of the associated key.

**DelVals Deletes all values in a key. Use as a value of the associated key.

**DeleteKeys A semicolon-delimited list of keys to delete.
Example: **DeleteKeys NoRun;NoFind

**SecureKey **SecureKey=1 secures the key, giving administrators and the system full control, and giving users read-only access. **SecureKey=0 resets access to the key to whatever is set on the root.

type

Value	Meaning
**DeleteValues	A semicolon-delimited list of values to delete. Use as a value of the associated key.
**Del.valuename	Deletes a single value. Use as a value of the associated key.
**DelVals	Deletes all values in a key. Use as a value of the associated key.
**DeleteKeys	A semicolon-delimited list of keys to delete. Example: **DeleteKeys NoRun;NoFind
**SecureKey	SecureKey=1 secures the key, giving administrators and the system full control, and giving users read-only access. SecureKey=0 resets access to the key to whatever is set on the root.

The data type. The field can be one of the following values:

REG_BINARY
REG_DWORD
REG_EXPAND_SZ
REG_MULTI_SZ
REG_SZ

size

The size of the data field, in bytes.

data

The user-supplied data.

If value, type, size, or data are missing or zero, only the registry key will be created.

Note A Registry.pol file produced by the Windows NT 4.0 System Policy Editor is a binary file. It is not compatible with the Group Policy snap-in.