Class to handle the Windows Registry operations

• Download CRegistry.zip - 2.3 KB
• Download Registry_workspace.zip - 21.5 KB

Introduction

As most of the beginners are not well aware about the windows registery, they usually come with problems just by deleting the main nodes of windows, which leads to Windows to get hanged or even crash. And then, they got the crazy to start programming with the Windows registry. Windows Registry programming is extremely easy. There are two provisions provided by windows for doing this. One is using of SDK or MFC. But both cases we dont have a API that can create a node and set the value using a single API, which is one of the most important constraint in front of us. So to solve this, I came up with a solution to write a class that can do both creation as setting the value using a single API.

Background

Beginners to windows programming are eager to get started with the Windows registry programming. While doing the programming and handling with registry, please be careful not to delete any important nodes that are essential for the working of windows. And for a beginner, I will say you to stick with SDK rather than MFC. I know both of these will not there in Windows Vista. But still SDK is the base for the Windows programmer.

Using the code

A brief description of how to use the article or code. The class names, the methods and properties, any tricks or tips.

Blocks of code should be set as style "Formatted" like this:

    CRegistry reg;
    HKEY hkey = KEY_ALL_ACCESS;
    DWORD dwData = 0;
//  This code will create a registry entry corresponding to this code.
    reg.CreateRegistryKey(HKEY_CURRENT_USER,_T( "Software\\MySoftware" ),hkey,dwData);
    reg. CreateAndSetValue( HKEY_CURRENT_USER, ,_T( "Software\\MySoftware" ),
              _T( "MyValue" ), _T( "Value1" ))

Points of Interest

Hope you all know what is a windows registry, We can call it as a configuration handling section. It is responsibility of the registry to keep all the configurations needed for the Windows to get worked proparly. Earlier days, INI files were used for the configuration handling, but it was never being a proper solution to keep the configurations in INI, since it got scattered here and there . So they are kept in a directory it can be called as Windows Registry. The registry also provides a window into the operation of the kernel, exposing runtime information such as performance counters and currently active hardware. This use of registry mechanism is conceptually similar to the way that Sysfs and procfs expose runtime information through the file system.

History

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