Extracting Registry keys from DLL's

[Anthony Hunter]

I've been having some problems with getting all of the required registry
entries extracted from dll's that need to be registered. What is the
recommend tool to use?

Thanks,
Anthony
--
Product Availability Developer
Invensys Avantis - www.avantis.net

[Richard [Microsoft Windows Installer MVP]]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Anthony Hunter" <anthony.hunter@_NOSPAM_.invensys.com> spake the secret code
<Ojlpe#mLGHA...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl> thusly:

> I've been having some problems with getting all of the required registry
>entries extracted from dll's that need to be registered. What is the
>recommend tool to use?

I don't know that there's a specific tool that is recommended for
this; usually the extractors are integrated into MSI authoring tools
like InstallShield. With deployment project types in VS.NET 2003, I
saw problems with the data being properly extracted. At one point,
when freely available tools for authoring MSIs were less readily
available, I was working on my own tool and wrote a C++ program that
noticed changes in the registry for COM object registration. It did a
simple registry diff.

There are tools specifically for making system diffs, including diffs
of the registry. You might try looking for a system snapshot tool or
system difference tool.
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[Rob Hamflett]

There's a tool called Tallow in the WiX toolset. It'll create XML WiX output, but you should be
able to work out what the registry entries are with little difficulty.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix/

Rob

[Jeff Henkels]

"Anthony Hunter" <anthony.hunter@_NOSPAM_.invensys.com> wrote in message
news:Ojlpe%23mLGH...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

> I've been having some problems with getting all of the required
> registry entries extracted from dll's that need to be registered. What is
> the recommend tool to use?
>

It's been a few years, but ISTR an article in Windows Developer's Journal or
MSDN Mag a few years back that used RegOverridePredefKey then called
DllRegisterServer to capture all the registry info for a DLL. Basically, it
would remap the standard registry root keys (HKLM, HKCU, etc.) to a key
structure of your choosing, then register the DLL; then all the DLL's
registry values would show up under the mapped key, making it easy to
extract them later.

I suspect that's what the registry extractors in tools like InstallShield &
Wise do; you could probably put together a similar tool without much
difficulty.

[Phil Wilson]

That is my RegSpy utility! The code is available still availble here, scroll
down:

http://installsite.org/pages/en/msi/tips.htm

and here:
http://www.windevnet.com/documents/s=7630/wdj0106a/0106a.htm in the code
archive.

--
Phil Wilson
[Microsoft MVP-Windows Installer]

"Jeff Henkels" <je...@mapson.jeffhenkels.com> wrote in message
news:eB$ezVKMG...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

[Richard [Microsoft Windows Installer MVP]]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

"Jeff Henkels" <je...@mapson.jeffhenkels.com> spake the secret code
<eB$ezVKMG...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl> thusly:

>It's been a few years, but ISTR an article in Windows Developer's Journal or
>MSDN Mag a few years back that used RegOverridePredefKey then called
>DllRegisterServer to capture all the registry info for a DLL. Basically, it
>would remap the standard registry root keys (HKLM, HKCU, etc.) to a key
>structure of your choosing, then register the DLL; then all the DLL's
>registry values would show up under the mapped key, making it easy to
>extract them later.

Hey, that's a nice trick! Better than what I was doing (a primitive
registry diff) in my extractor tool. Previously I had only known
about the device driver trick which seemed a bit much for my tastes.