Transfer customized environment variables to a new system(Windows XP, Vista, 7)

              Environment variables can be used to redirect system folders in the system. However, you have to reconfi gure these settings after reinstallation, which takes up unnecessary time.
              Windows saves environment variables in the Registry. Maintaining these values here has a great advantage: you can easily save the settings in an REG file. After reinstallation, a doubleclick suffices for reconfi guration.

              The required data is divided in two keys in the registry. Open ‘Run’ in the Start menu in XP, type ‘regedit’ and press Enter. You can also directly enter the command in the search fi eld in more recent Windows versions. In the Editor, navigate to the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment’ key. It contains all the values provided by the user, where a character string with the name of the environment variable is available in each case. The value of the string reproduces the contents. You can process each of these values by double clicking. Rightclick the ‘Environment’ key and select the context command ‘Export’ for saving the data. Provide ‘User environment variables’ as the ‘File name’ for instance, leave the ‘Selected part structure’ option activated as the export range and then click ‘Save’.
              Subsequently, navigate further to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment’. All the environment variables managed by the system are saved there. You will also find values such as ‘ComSpec’, ‘OS’ or ‘PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE’ here. A glance at the list also provides suggestions that define the environment variables that are unknown to you and can be used in scripts. You can process this list as described or export it in an REG file and then process it using a text editor and print it.
               After reinstallation, at least the environment variables defined by the user can quickly be restored in the REG file. However, you should not completely overwrite the system data but manually enter as and when required.