From: Gary Britt 

It certainly looks like ascii, but I can tell you from personal experience
when I view a non-ascii version 5 registry file with the built in file
viewer that comes with ZtreeWin it looks exactly like ascii and like what
you've shown below.  Fooled me into thinking it was really ascii until when
something wasn't working right for me in trying edit or do something with
the file, I finally figured out it was really a binary, non-ascii, file
that I was viewing.  If it says its version 5 at the top of the file, then
it ain't really ascii.  If it says version 4 at the top of the file than it
really is ascii (probably ).

Gary

Frank Haber wrote:
> I call this stuff ASCII.  The mounted hives are compressed, and half
> this size...
>
> ========
>
>
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{b4fe65aa-f9e9-4b13-bd79-a949102c5
294}\TypeLib]
>
> {at}="{E891EE9A-D0AE-4cb4-8871-F92C0109F18E}"
>
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{b4fe65aa-f9e9-4b13-bd79-a949102c5
294}\VersionIndependentProgID]
>
> {at}="Photoshop.PathPointInfo"
>
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B50F5260-0C21-11D2-AB56-00A0C9082
678}]
>
> {at}="Compress Files Cleaner"
>
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B50F5260-0C21-11D2-AB56-00A0C9082
678}\DefaultIcon]
>
> {at}=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,74,00,25
,\
>
>  00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,44,00,41,00,\
>
>  54,00,41,00,43,00,4c,00,45,00,4e,00,2e,00,44,00,4c,00,4c,00,2c,00,32,00,00,\
>
>  00

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5