Date: 08/06/07 (Software)    Keywords: software, linux

While running Linux on the same machine where Windows XP (Pro, with SP1) is installed, or while running Win9x on another machine that has read access to XP's registry files, is there software I could use to export the registry to a .reg file?

The NTFS partition is mounted read-only, and I don't need or want write access to it. I just have a bunch of Win32 software installers that can't run on Wine, but the software itself is said to run fine on Wine if a working installation on Windows is just copied over along with everything it needs from the registry.

I know that I could run REGEDIT on XP to export it easily, but rebooting that particular machine this week would be inconvenient.

REGEDIT does run on Wine, but the Load Hive option in the File menu is grayed out. I don't know whether that's because Windows has to be running to make that option available, or whether I might need only to copy the right files from XP over to Wine's fake C: drive to make it work.

Two other machines on the local network have Windows installed, but the versions are 95C and 98SE. On either of those two, REGEDIT seems to expect the computer's name to be enough information to let the data be made human-readable, so I assume it would need (at the very least) for Windows to be running on the same Linux system that I don't want to shut down.

Installing XP on an emulator on Linux right now is out of the question for various reasons.

So, I'm hoping (in vain?) that some free and legal software exists that understands XP's registry files well enough to convert them to .reg format. So far, everything I've found requires that an NT-based Windows version be up and running to do the actual conversion. Any ideas?

[cross-posted to linuxnewbies]

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/software/74741.html