Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Chapter 8. Programming with the Registry

So far, all the chapters in this book have taught you how, and why, to use the Registry tools that Microsoft provides as part of Windows 2000. For the most part, these tools are sufficient for everyday use. However, you may find it necessary to write your own tools from time to time.

Windows 2000 also provides a comprehensive set of routines that allow your programs to read, write, and modify Registry keys and values. You can also connect to remote computers’ Registries, get and set security data on keys and values, and do basically everything that RegEdt32, RegEdit, and the resource kit utilities can do. This capability is a double-edged sword: you can write programs that do exactly what you want, but the burden of properly using the Registry calls is entirely on you.

The Registry API

The original Registry API is defined in winreg.h, part of Microsoft’s Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK) for NT 4.0 and Windows 95. The current version is still part of the Win32 API, but now it lives in the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Platform SDK. There are 28 distinct routines in the Registry API, though most of them actually have two variants: one that works with standard one-byte ASCII strings and another that handles Unicode strings. The ASCII versions have routine names that end in “A,” such as RegCreateKeyA, while the Unicode versions end with a “W,” as in RegCreateKeyW. Macros in winreg.h automatically map the correct variant to the routine name. ...