[HD2 General] samsamuel:
A brief 'how to' about finding which registry keys control simple settings.

(There are other methods and software, but the principal of save file, make changes, compare to file is common throughout)

HKCR - Hot Key Classes Root - not really sure, never really looked though, i always ignore it.

HKCU - Hot Key Current User - Holds short term info and user settings for the most part. Expect lots of changes found when you search this branch.

HKLM - Hot Key Local machine - Generally hard system settings, pretty static.

Get 'ceregeditor' and install it,

connect the phone to usb and allow it to connect to activesync,

in ceregeditor click connection - connect, jump to tools - unlock registry

(skip this step unless you get an error pops up later saying you cant make changes)

Now, down the left you see your registry main keys in a standard tree layout, HKCR, HKCU, HKLM

and on the right, the keys and values within the selected branch when you select on the left.

So, you want to find out which registry key controls, for example, phone keypad tones, long, short, off.

Select HKCU on the left, right click and choose export - and save it as something, HKCU would be the obvious choice, it doesn't matter.

Do the same for HKLM.

It will save all the sub keys of wehatever you select on the left.

you can select to start from sub keys by selecting the appropriate key in the left column, assuming you know which part of the registry you want to search.

most hardware settings are held in HKLM, with things like user preffs found in HKCU, but be warned HKCU changes frequently, so expect a long list of changes when you run a registry compare.)

Once you have saved the files (in all honesty, i dont create them both, usually i check HKLM first, and if i dont find what im looking for only then do i check HKCU)

make your change on your phone

(set phonepad keytones to off, for instance) then back in ceregeditor, right click the selected registry key and choose reload selected.

This makes sure ceregeditor is now aware of the new registry value from the phone.

Now go to compare - compare registry.

It will ask you for a file, point it to the one you just saved, and let it run, , ,it will tell you what keys have changed.

You may occasionally get unconnected changes thrown up, but use a little common sense and you can usually tell what is usefull and what isnt.

In the results window, down the left are the items that have changed, with details of the change on the right.

In our example with the keytones, (not a great example since the target is in the HKCU and so is lost among lots of other changes) you should be able to figure out that the keytone settings are held in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Sounds\Keypress beepmode

Its usually fairly obvious which is the key you are after amid the noise of random system state changes.

When you find your target, put a tick in the box and hit export. You can now save that key (or keys if there are several changes you want to save)

Save it as .cereg and you will be able to simply run that file on your phone to apply those settings.

Or, with wincecabmanager (my other recommended piece of software alongside ceregeditor) its easy to import the reg file into a cab. You can keep adding to that cab as you find and extract more personalised settings.

Keep it in your autoinstall folder on your sd card, and it will always be applied when you hard reset.

My own 'my tweaks.cab' file is fat with various settings, tweaks, etc and i still add to it regularly.

It's true that it's often easier to trawl <searchengine></searchengine> and find the answer, and maybe even a cab to turn it on and off, but its a nice way to start p0king at your registry and seeing how things work, plus you can make one cab for yourself, adding tweaks one by one, without remembering to store loads of different ones and re apply them when you restore/hard reset.