Welcome to the second part!<\/p>\n
In this part I’ll teach you how to write stuff away inside the Windows Registry.<\/p>\n
*NOTE: For the remainder of this 5-part blog entry, i’ll be using the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive to read and write from the registry.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Ok, let’s say we got an application called “MyApp” and we have certain settings we would like to store inside the Windows Registry. All software settings are stored within the SOFTWARE<\/strong> subkey from our used hive, so it’s obvious that our settings should be stored within HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\MyApp<\/strong><\/p>\n A special note regarding this:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Always keep in mind the following: Code-wise this isn’t really an issue, since it’ll automaticly store data within the correct subkey. Only if you plan to manually lookup and\/or change settings during the development I myself am using a 64-bit operating system. Keep that in mind for the remainder of this post.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Ok, now that we have that cleared out, let’s continue shall we? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n The .NET framework provides us with 2 base classes located within the Microsoft.Win32 <\/strong>namespace to interact with the Registry.<\/p>\n – Microsoft.Win32.Registry<\/strong> So you might want to start off with using the Microsoft.Win32 namespace in your project:<\/p>\n Once you’ve done that, it’s time to work with those 2 classes. After that we define where the key has to work:<\/p>\n Note: the “true” defines wether we can write to the subkey or not.<\/span> A good habbit is to check wether the subkey you plan on using (in our case MyApp) already exists or not<\/strong>. I assume you’re more then capable of writing that small code snippet yourself. To create a subkey, use the following code snippet:<\/p>\n Now, in order to store our settings under that subkey, we have to say that our oRegKey has to be working inside that subkey:<\/p>\n Once we’ve done that, we can start storing our settings!<\/p>\n So in our case:<\/p>\n Once you’ve run those commands, you can find those settings stored in your Registry!<\/p>\n HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\MyApp\\… for 64-bit applications on a 64-bit Operating System or for 32-bit applications on a 32-bit Operating System Finally we’ll close the regkey with the following command:<\/p>\n There we go! You know posses the knowledge of how to write to the Windows Registry!
\nProceed to the summary of this post<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSettings such as the version<\/strong><\/span> of the program, the author<\/strong><\/span> (programmer) and a serial<\/strong><\/span> for the program.<\/p>\n
\nHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\… for 64-bit applications on a 64-bit operating system OR for 32-bit applications on a 32-bit operating system
\nHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\… for 32-bit applications on a 64-bit operating system<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\nof your program you’ll have to look under the correct subkey. I don’t want you freaking out like “Omg, it stored the settings somewhere hidden in my Registry and now I can’t find it!”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\n– Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey<\/strong><\/p>\n'Importing the Microsoft.Win32 Namespace\r\nImports Microsoft.Win32<\/pre>\n
\nWe’ll start off by declaring a variable called oRegKey as a RegistryKey:<\/p>\n'Declaring our Registry key\r\nDim oRegKey As RegistryKey<\/pre>\n
'Define the subkey we're going to use in writeable mode\r\noRegKey = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(\"SOFTWARE\", True)<\/pre>\n
\nAlright, so we’re working inside “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE”<\/p>\n
\nOnce we’re sure that the subkey doesn’t exist, let’s create it!<\/p>\n'Create a SubKey for our program\r\noRegKey.CreateSubKey(\"MyApp\")<\/pre>\n
'Define our own SubKey to work with in writeable mode\r\noRegKey = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(\"SOFTWARE\\MyApp\", True)<\/pre>\n
'RegistryKey.SetValue example\r\noRegKey.SetValue(Name As String, Value As Object)<\/pre>\n
'Store values\r\noRegKey.SetValue(\"Version\", \"1.0\")\r\noRegKey.SetValue(\"Author\", \"Dirk Schuermans\")\r\noRegKey.SetValue(\"Serial\", \"A1B2C3D4E5F6G7H8I9\")<\/pre>\n
\nHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\MyApp\\… for 32-bit applications on a 64-bit Operating System<\/p>\n'Close the RegistryKey\r\noRegKey.Close()<\/pre>\n
\nPlease keep in mind that different parts of the Registry require different security permissions. The 2 software subkeys are usually writeable by regular users aswell.<\/p>\n