The Windows® 98 Registry

Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere...
Review: I agree with the previous review. Seemingly comprehensive but how do you get through it? Very poorly written. Compare his writing skills to Paul McFedries, for example, an excellent writer. A better book on the Win 98 Registry has to be out there.

Rating:
Summary: Look elsewhere...
Review: This book, while comprehensive, is not written for your average user. As a PC technician for over 10 years, this book had me reading paragraphs two or three times in order to understand what Mr. Woram is trying to communicate. The book is written as you would expect a government manual on rules and regulations to be written. Example: "So whenever bad things happen and the Registry is a prime suspect, you should start searching for evidence in Chapter 7. However, if a problem is polite enough to announce itself by displaying a message, then try Chapter 8, where such messages are lined up for inspection. Some messages are self-explanatory, while others border on the incomprehensible. If you encounter one of the latter, perhaps the explanation offered in this book will help. And if neither the message nor the explanation is enough to resolve the problem, then you'll find a reference to a section in the previous chapter, or to an earlier part of the book, where the required information can be found." HUH?? He also details a way of backing up the two main HKEYs in DOS. What he fails to mention, however, is that those files have attributes that you must reset before you can run his example commands. OH, and if your registry is very large, this exporting can take upwards of an hour or more. And when doing the restore in DOS, he fails to mention that a large registry may result in an Out Of Memory error, since DOS has such limited memory capacity. He tends to be a bit wordy, with things like: "The title bar at the top of the window contains the conventional Windows components: a Control menu icon, the title of the application, and the usual three buttons for minimize, restore, and close. No further explanation is offered here." So while he feels the need to tell us that a registry error may 'annouce itself', he feels the need to tell us that it does this by 'displaying a message', (see above), and then he says, in the other example that "no other information is offered here." Well, one could deduce that fact on ones own, without that frivolous information. He writes parts of the book as if the reader has never used Windows before, and then writes other parts of the book using Hexidecimal codes without an explanation of how to interpret them. Example: "Just add 10 to the hexidecimal..." If you see 5E, how do you add 10 to that? This would require previous knowledge of hexidecimal since no explanation is offered in this book. Definately not a cover-to-cover read. An excellent reference for a technician or power user. Not for your average Joe.

Rating:
Summary: Paid by the word?
Review: This book, while comprehensive, is not written for your average user. As a PC technician for over 10 years, this book had me reading paragraphs two or three times in order to understand what Mr. Woram is trying to communicate. The book is written as you would expect a government manual on rules and regulations to be written. Example: "So whenever bad things happen and the Registry is a prime suspect, you should start searching for evidence in Chapter 7. However, if a problem is polite enough to announce itself by displaying a message, then try Chapter 8, where such messages are lined up for inspection. Some messages are self-explanatory, while others border on the incomprehensible. If you encounter one of the latter, perhaps the explanation offered in this book will help. And if neither the message nor the explanation is enough to resolve the problem, then you'll find a reference to a section in the previous chapter, or to an earlier part of the book, where the required information can be found." HUH?? He also details a way of backing up the two main HKEYs in DOS. What he fails to mention, however, is that those files have attributes that you must reset before you can run his example commands. OH, and if your registry is very large, this exporting can take upwards of an hour or more. And when doing the restore in DOS, he fails to mention that a large registry may result in an Out Of Memory error, since DOS has such limited memory capacity. He tends to be a bit wordy, with things like: "The title bar at the top of the window contains the conventional Windows components: a Control menu icon, the title of the application, and the usual three buttons for minimize, restore, and close. No further explanation is offered here." So while he feels the need to tell us that a registry error may 'annouce itself', he feels the need to tell us that it does this by 'displaying a message', (see above), and then he says, in the other example that "no other information is offered here." Well, one could deduce that fact on ones own, without that frivolous information. He writes parts of the book as if the reader has never used Windows before, and then writes other parts of the book using Hexidecimal codes without an explanation of how to interpret them. Example: "Just add 10 to the hexidecimal..." If you see 5E, how do you add 10 to that? This would require previous knowledge of hexidecimal since no explanation is offered in this book. Definately not a cover-to-cover read. An excellent reference for a technician or power user. Not for your average Joe.