Use registry data previously used on a true Windows PC ?

[Markorki]

hello, I'm new here

I 've long used (and still use on a soon migrating PC) Windows 98SE on my "main" desktop computer.

I use(d) Applications such as XnView and exifer, to manage and process digital pictures, and used them a very long time. I shfted to Linux (ubuntu lucid LTS) and would like to use these applications without losing my profiles: renaming patterns, window layout, values used in many list-boxes, etc...
XnView can be configured to use an .ini file rather than the registry, and I use it this way, so I can move my profile(s) from a computer to an other with no risk.

Exifer does not use en .ini file, and stores all its context un registry. Too bad !;-(( but **excellent** application.
May I reuse a profile just by openeing a .reg file with wine, or will it destroy/corrupt my installed Wine, used for 3 applications ?
Is there a recommanded way of proceeding ?

[DaVince]

May I reuse a profile just by openeing a .reg file with wine, or will it destroy/corrupt my installed Wine, used for 3 applications ?

If the reg file only contains configurations for your particular app, it should be safe to install it without problems.

If you ever "break" your Wine installation, you can always fix it by moving/removing the $HOME/.wine directory (though you'll also move/remove any software you installed in Wine in that specific prefix if you do).

[DaVince]

Just remembered something.

If you want to check whether it's safe to install the reg file into the Wine registry, open it with a text editor first. That way you can confirm if only your app's specific stuff is inside.

[Markorki]

Thanks for such a fast answer

The .reg file has been obtained by exporting (regedit on the Windows PC) the registry key "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Exifer]", so I guess it should be OK, but...
I moved my .reg to my $HOME/.wine directory, and then I right-clicked on it and selected "open with Wine", and I get an error message box saying something like "No windows program configured to open this kind of file"

(my Ubuntu is in french , it says "Aucun programme Windows n'est configuré pour ouvrir ce type de fichier")

I tried with Wine configured as "98" or as "XP : same problem.
I suppose it is not a problem of character encoding (I can't open my .reg in Gedit, but it opens in Notepad), because Wine reads the .ini just as moved directly from my Windows PC when I use XnView ?

[DaVince]

Well, you don't actually *open* a registry file with Wine. Wine can only run exe files, which in turn do stuff. In this case, you'll want to run Wine's implementation of Regedit and import the key in there. (And it seems that Wine doesn't know that a .reg file opens with Regedit in your case.)

Try "regedit file.reg" in a terminal and it should import the registry keys from the file.

[Markorki]

Thank you, it works fine: I had tried with a very old config of exifer: the .reg was not the rich one I thought.