Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

[SpawnHappyJake]

Hey, sorry guys. Forum rules says we're not supposed to use acronyms.
Here's some I used:

GUI = Graphical User Interface. (there's buttons instead of all typing. Think Windows instead of DOS - Disk Operating System). Includes graphical aids like buttons and/or menus/ and/or dropdowns and/or trees, etc. A two-dimensional area with interactable subareas (technically it COULD be 3-D).

CLI = Command Line Interface. No buttons or anything graphical. All typing.

ls = Command line command for LiSting what's in the current directory (folder or registry key, the current path). Type "ls" then enter.

iso ~ intentional double meaning: It means both the "International Standardization Organization" and the Greek work "iso" which means "same," since that is the goal of the organization. The ISO 9660 standard is a filesystem for optical discs, so images of optical discs compliant to this standard are often called isos. Note: not all CD images can be rightfully called an iso, because only some CDs comply to this standard. Example: you can't make a true iso of an audio CD. You can dump it and name the image file *.iso, but it won't be an iso.


cd = change directory or compact disc (as in optical), depending on context

WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator

chntpw = CHange NT PassWord

AVG = Anti-Virus by Gritsoft

OS = Operating System

sudo = Super User DO (from what I've heard)

I don't think we have to be THAT picky, but I wanted to clear the air, especially for my first post.

[Mr Stoozer]

You could use imagex to capture the Windows image. You could then mount it and service it, all offline (and use the image to test in a Virtual Machine before redeploying). Whether this is possible whilst using a LiveCD, i cannot tell.

[SpawnHappyJake]

You could use Imagex to capture the Windows image. You could then mount it and service it, all offline (and use the image to test in a Virtual Machine before redeploying). Whether this is possible whilst using a LiveCD, i cannot tell.

There's stuff that has to be known about that option. First, Windows usually is picky about hardware, unlike Linux. If I have Linux installed to a thumb drive, I can boot darn near any computer off that thumb drive - even a MacBook with a little sorcery. If I installed WinXP to a thumb drive and tried to boot off the thumb drive on a computer different hardware-wise from the one I used to install WinXP onto the thumb drive, then it will complain about the hardware difference because it is not configured for the other hardware - unless you do the "portability hack" (see http://forums.ngine.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3202 and http://forums.ngine.de/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3132 , though the person is wrong when he says Linux installs itself every time because I have actually INSTALLED Linux to a thumb drive, and it can boot off any computer. Notice this is different than making it bootable into the installer).
So if you image a Windows drive and mount it in a virtual machine, there will be different hardware, and you will first need to tweak the registry before it will boot in the virtual machine.
Second, servicing the image from within a virtual machine is probably only worth the hard drive space, resources, and time if you are going to do things other than simple registry editing. You could just copy the %systemroot%\config folder, edit the copy, then paste back over...as opposed to copying the entire hard drive or partition, tweaking it to work with the emulated environment, then proceeding to take up the resources necessary to emulate an entire machine (in an already limited "Live" environment). However, it would be nice to see if everything works first, and that gets me excited that idea...good job sir. But why not do something like Plop's vhd booter, eh? http://www.plop.at/en/vhdloader.html . Then you are only running 1.1 operating systems instead of 2, or however that works out. Now THAT'S some SERIOUS sorcery!
Just have a multi-bootable thumb drive with the Plop VHD booter as an option, and off you go!
Or you can boot the raw image with something like this: http://reboot.pro/10107/ .
LiveCD? No. LiveThumbDrive. Come on. Either way, yes, you could make a LiveCD with VirtualBox, chntpw, WINE 1.3.17, and the MiTeC Registry Viewer all installed already in the live environment. There's probably a way to increase allotted temporary filesystem space as well during the creation of the disc (which you might need).
You could mount a plain raw image in Linux with "sudo mount - o loop," but I don't think you can for any other format of image.
However, this Imagex sounds like a rather proprietary, "smart" ,"cooked" (it ain't raw no more, and certainly ain't mooin') image that needs a special program to make sense of it. You need cooked images for hard drives or else they'd get to big, unless you could somehow mount and edit an image while constantly keeping it in a tar.bz2. I doubt VirtualBox will be able to make sense of this Imagex format. With raw images, there's nothing that needs to be made sense of, they are 1:1 copies of the original (unless the firmware lied). So no, Linux can't mount the Imagex images, unless there is a tool for doing so that I don't know of.
Making vhd images is one option. The Plop VHD Loader as well as VirtualBox could boot that image once you've done the portability hack.
Making a raw img image is another option. This can be booted with the http://reboot.pro/10107/ technique, and IS mountable with Linux's "sudo mount -o loop". The image won't be bootable unless it is continuous (the file itself is not fragmented on the disk). The big downer here is that the image must be able to fit in the RAM and still have enough left to do other things (like run the operating system). So if you have a 40 GB XP install...not happening. Test in a Virtual Machine.
Then again, you don't have to test at all. You can just edit the disk first, and ask questions later. If it still doesn't work, what's new? You can use the same method to eventually fix it, or do a repair install. Or switch to Linux .
An idea I've had in my head for a long time was, "Why can't a share a REAL partition to VirtualBox? Then I could have a hybrid between a 'dual boot scenario' and a 'virtualization scenario'." But no one seems to be doing this. This would be optimal in this situation. Just boot into a LiveCD (or thumb drive) environment with VirtualBox, point it at the partition, and boot it to see if our editings bore good fruit.

[SpawnHappyJake]

http://openreged.sourceforge.net/
OpenRegEd doesn't exist yet, but it will be the solution. It is an open source GUI implementation of chntpw. Get that sucker compiled for your Linux, and you're golden.