Registry Access

Hello,
I'm having problems with the registry.. and the Win32 API Reference isn't exactly clear. :confused:
Say I wanted to greet the user by the name stored in the registry, located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion

The data value that I want to read is "RegisteredOwner" - after this I would simply display a message box.

Also, how can I set a value in the registry? I can use RegSetValue but that only stores data in the registry as the "default" data value - perhaps I want to store a value in the registry under a certain key with the string value name of "User".. To put this in more simple terms, I wish to achieve the same effect as the following ".key" file:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MySoftware]
"UserName"="Bill Gates"
"RegistrationKey"="G45-46346-DF345"


Any tutorials or replies helping with this problem would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks. :)

To access the data you open the key and then query the value -

Code:

---

        HKEY hkey;
        TCHAR name[255];
        TCHAR sk[] = "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion";
        DWORD a;
        DWORD b;
        RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,sk,0,KEY_QUERY_VALUE ,&hkey);
        RegQueryValueEx(hkey,"Registered Owner",0,&a,(BYTE*)name,&b);
        MessageBox(0,name,"Hello",0);

---

I think you could probably do something similar to write to data to a key using RegSetValueEx(). However you'll need to adjust the access when opening the key, and ensure the person using your program has admin rights on NT based Windows.

From your example I'd guess it'd be something like this -

Code:

---

        TCHAR dataname[]="UserName";
        TCHAR data[]="Bill Gates";
        RegSetValueEx(hkey,dataname,0,REG_SZ,(BYTE*)data,strlen(data)+1);

---

Assuming you'd already opened the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MySoftware with the required access using RegOpenKeyEx(). This is untested so you may have to changed it around to get the required result.

I checked everything to make sure it's correct in my registry. I had the same Q but never got to post it. When I did:


HKEY hkey;
TCHAR name[255];
TCHAR sk[] = "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion" ;
DWORD a;
DWORD b;

RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,sk,0,KEY_QUERY_VAL UE ,&hkey);
RegQueryValueEx(hkey,"RegisteredOwner",0,&a,(BYTE* )name,&b);
MessageBox(0,name,"Owner",0);


It comes up with a message box, it's just blank.

Quote:

---

I checked everything to make sure it's correct in my registry. I had the same Q but never got to post it. When I did:


HKEY hkey;
TCHAR name[255];
TCHAR sk[] = "Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion" ;
DWORD a;
DWORD b;

RegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,sk,0,KEY_QUERY_VA
LUE ,&hkey);
RegQueryValueEx(hkey,"RegisteredOwner",0,&a,(BYTE* )name,&b);
MessageBox(0,name,"Owner",0);


It comes up with a message box, it's just blank

---

It will work in Windows 98, but that specific key isnt in that position on Win2K for instance.

The registries of Win2K+ and 95/98 are very different