Administering Clients
The reason that Regedit is an administrator's dream is because she can use it to connect to client computers and edit the Registries on them. A few caveats, though: The administrator must have permission to edit the client computer's Registry, which Windows 2000 provides to administrators by default, and the computer must be connected to the network.
To connect to a client computer's Registry, click Connect Network Registry on the Registry menu, and then type the name of the remote computer in Computer Name. In the Connect Network Registry dialog box, you can click Browse to select a computer that's known to the network. Regedit creates a new icon at the same level as My Computer for the client computer. Under the client computer's icon are three root keys: HKCR, HKLM, and HKU. These are the only two root keys that Regedit displays for client computers because all the remaining root keys are links to these.
After you connect to a client computer's Registry, you're bound by each subkey's permissions. If you connected to the Registry with administrative rights, you have access to most of its subkeys. Otherwise, each subkey's Access Control List (ACL) determines your permissions. Keep in mind that permission to access a client computer's Registry is different than each individual subkey's permissions. Chapter 6, "Administering Registries," tells you more about securing subkeys in the Registry.
When you're finished administering the client computer's Registry, disconnect from it. On the Registry menu, click Disconnect Network Registry. When you close Regedit, it closes the connection automatically, so it won't appear again when you next start Regedit.
NOTE
Regedit never updates your view of a client computer's Registry, even if the registry changes on that computer. You must manually refresh the program's window by pressing F5.