What Is HKEY_CURRENT_USER?

 

What Is HKEY_CURRENT_USER? 

The user-level settings in the Control Panel are stored in this registry hive.

  How to Get to HKEY_CURRENT_USER  

In Registry Editor, you can find the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive by scrolling to the top of the program and selecting the arrow or plus sign to the left of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT folder to minimize/collapse that entire hive. The HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive contains keys and values for the current user, including labels, sounds, and descriptions for various functions in Windows and third-party apps, as well as keyboard settings for the Keyboard Control Panel applet. The Control Panel section dedicated solely to the mouse cursor is found under Cursors. The HKCU Control Panel Desktop key defines lots of Desktop-related settings, and the Environment key is where environment variables like PATH and TEMP are found. This hive is a pointer to another hive that contains the security identifier of your account. You can make changes in either location since they are one and the same. HKEY_CURRENT_USER pertains only to the user that's currently logged on, and each user pulls their own information from the corresponding HKEY_USERS hive.