_winreg and access registry settings of another user

[News123]

Hi,

I habe administrator privilege on a window host and would like to write
a script setting some registry entries for other users.

There are potentially at least two wo ways of doing this:

1.) start a subprocess as other user and change the regitrey for
CURRENT_USER

However I don't know how to start a process (or ideally just a thread)
as another user with python.

2.) Load the 'hive' of the othe user and chnage the registry.

It seems, that one has to load the 'hive' of a different user in order
to have access to somebody eleses registry entries.

I did not find any documetnation of how to load a 'hive' wit the library
_winreg or another python library/

Did anybody else try already something similiar?

thanks in advance for pointers

bye

N

[Mensanator]

On Mar 4, 3:24 pm, News123 <news...@free.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I habe administrator privilege  on a window host and would like to write
> a script setting some registry entries for other users.

Why? Are you writing a virus?

[News123]

Mensanator wrote:
> On Mar 4, 3:24 pm, News123 <news...@free.fr> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>

>> I have administrator privilege on a window host and would like to write

>> a script setting some registry entries for other users.
>
> Why? Are you writing a virus?
>

Writing a virus in python???? Why not? though I didn't think about it as
ideal choice of implementing viruses.
For my script to run I have to run it explicitly as administrator
(as being required by Vista / Win7).

My script shall be part of installing and configuring a PC with some
default settings with the minimal amount of human administrator
interactions.

The steps:
- install windows
- install python
- setup one admin account and one or more user accounts (without admin
privileges)
- run a script, that preconfigures registry settings for some users.

As mentioned before I see at least two possible ways and achieving this
but lack information for either.

1.) run a sub process or thread as another user (the user wouldn't even
have a password during the installation phase) and change the registry
from this thread. I have no experience of running 'suid' under windows.

2.) being able to load the 'hive' of another user into the registry and
be therefore able to change his settings. I didn't find a function
allowing _winreg to load additional 'hives'

bye

N

[Tim Golden]

On 05/03/2010 07:21, News123 wrote:
> My script shall be part of installing and configuring a PC with some
> default settings with the minimal amount of human administrator
> interactions.
>
> The steps:
> - install windows
> - install python
> - setup one admin account and one or more user accounts (without admin
> privileges)
> - run a script, that preconfigures registry settings for some users.

> 2.) being able to load the 'hive' of another user into the registry and

> be therefore able to change his settings. I didn't find a function
> allowing _winreg to load additional 'hives'

You can use a combination of the win32security, win32api and win32profile
modules from the pywin32 package for this:

<code>
import win32security
import win32api
import win32profile

username = "USERNAME"
domain = "DOMAIN"
password = "PASSWORD"

hUser = win32security.LogonUser (
username,
domain,
password,
win32security.LOGON32_LOGON_NETWORK,
win32security.LOGON32_PROVIDER_DEFAULT
)
hReg = win32profile.LoadUserProfile (
hUser,
{"UserName" : "fozrestore"}
)
try:
print win32api.RegEnumKeyExW (hReg)
finally:
win32profile.UnloadUserProfile (hUser, hReg)

</code>

TJG