Copy PuTTY sessions between computers

I just setup a new machine and realized I had too many PuTTY sessions to manually setup (dozens of them). For some odd reason PuTTY keeps this session data in the Windows Registry. I would have figured it kept the sessions info in a flat file. The registry key is located at:

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions

If you’re not sure how to export and import registry keys this article has some easy to follow steps specific to PuTTY. It’s a fairly easy process, and I figure if your smart enough to use PuTTY you should be able to import/export registry keys without breaking your computer (but still, play with the Registry at your own risk!).

Now to take it another step you could have the sessions exported every day via the following PowerShell command:

REG EXPORT HKCU\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions c:\putty.reg

Simply put that into a  PS script and change the destination to where ya want (I have it set to c:\putty.reg). You could then use Task Scheduler to back it up once a day/week/whatever.

One final note: Earlier I posted about notepad++, which could be used to create the PS script and view/modify the reg file.

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