Comprehensive New Resource on the Windows Registry
Peter Norris was kind enough to point me at his Masters Thesis, The Internal Structure of the Windows Registry . Much of the information was previously available from a variety of sources (including this blog), but Peter's work also goes into a lot of unexplored territory, and doesn't shy away from the more esoteric aspects of the registry -- like how and when the Configuration Manager decides to update the on-disk copy of the registry with changes from memory. Anyone who works with registry data for forensics or creates tools to work with the Windows registry would do well to give this a thorough read-through. Thanks to Peter for this excellent contribution!