Because Windows depends on it to load your settings and preferences, removing it would corrupt your user profile. You shouldn’t ever delete your NTUSER.DAT file. Even Microsoft knows you should always back up your settings and files. But first, it makes a copy and renames it to (plus an incremented number) to back up your previous settings. Every time you make a change, Windows saves your new preferences to the NTUSER.DAT file. You’ll probably notice that in addition to an NTUSER.DAT file, there are also one or more files. You can turn on the Show Hidden Files option to make the file visible. Microsoft doesn’t intend for you to edit or delete this file, so they hide it.

If you don’t see NTUSER.DAT yet, don’t worry. Into File Explorer’s address bar, and then hitting enter. You can get there by opening File Explorer and either browsing to: Now Windows better supports multiple users on the same machine, and it does this by placing an NTUSER.DAT file in every user’s profile. In early versions when you started Windows, every user of the computer saw the same desktop, files, and programs. Windows didn’t always have full support for user profiles. Microsoft uses the DAT extension with any file that contains data.

The name NTUSER.DAT is a holdover from Windows NT, first introduced with Windows 3.1. This process lets you personal settings unique to your user profile, like your chosen desktop background. The next time you sign in, Windows will load NTUSER.DAT to memory, and all your preferences load to the Registry again. Then when you sign out or shut down, Windows saves that information to the NTUSER.DAT file. Windows accomplishes this by first storing that information to the Registry in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive. NTUSER.DAT Contains Your User Profile SettingsĮvery time you make a change to the look and behavior of Windows and installed programs, whether that’s your desktop background, monitor resolution, or even which printer is the default, Windows needs to remember your preferences the next time it loads.

Ntuser dat windows 7