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Registry sub-trees:
The Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems has two sub-tree registries: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_USERS. In order to keep the information in the registry easier to find, the Registry Editor utilities display five sub-trees, three of which are aliases of other parts of the registry.
These five sub-trees are:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT - Contains information needed by various file-class association data and OLE technologies. A corresponding key or value exists in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes if a particular key or value exists in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. If a key or value exists in both places, the HKEY_CURRENT_USER version is the one that appears in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER - Contains the user profile for the current logged in user, including environment variables, network connections, desktop settings, printers, and program preferences. This sub-tree is an alias of the HKEY_USERS sub-tree and points to HKEY_USERS\security ID of current user.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - Contains information of the local computer system, including hardware and operating system information such as bus type, device drivers, system memory, and startup control data.
