Reading Binary Registry Keys

Dave

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Oct 30, 2000, 1:22:31 PM10/30/00

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Hi,
I'm trying to read in the value from a registry key that contains a binary
string similar to:
54 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 61 20 74 65 73 74 2E

I've tried using RegRead which doesn't error but I can't diplay or store the
values. I want to be able to modify some of the values in the string based
on position and then write the modified values back to the registry. Do I
need to somehow read the values into an array?

Chad Myers

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Oct 30, 2000, 1:40:14 PM10/30/00

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WshShell.RegRead supports the registry type REG_BINARY, so it should
work.

Perhaps it returns a byte array or something instead of a string?

Have you tried:

Dim vValue
Dim WshShell
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
vValue = WshShell.RegRead("YOUR_KEY")
WScript.Echo vValue(0)

Does this work?

-Chad

"Dave" <ma...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message news:O3coV5pQAHA.247@cppssbbsa03...

Michael Harris

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Oct 30, 2000, 3:09:34 PM10/30/00

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As of WSH 2.0, you should be getting an array with elements that are variants of subtype byte.

sKey = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\mykey\binKey\"
set shell = createobject("wscript.shell")
val = shell.regread(sKey)
msgbox typename(val)
msgbox typename(val(0))
msgbox val(0)

--
Michael Harris
Microsoft.MVP.Scripting
--

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Dave

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Oct 31, 2000, 12:55:50 AM10/31/00

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Chad... yes I had tried that.
Michael... That works very well. Thanks.

Dave

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Dave

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Nov 1, 2000, 2:06:50 AM11/1/00

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It seems that I still have a problem...
I can read the values OK, and change them but I can't write them back to the
registry.
Set WshShell=CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
strKey = "HKCU\MyKey\Test"
answer = WshShell.Regread(strKey)
answer(5)=76
WshShell.RegWrite "HKCU\MyKey\Test\", answer

The last line gives me a type mismatch. If I try
WshShell.RegWrite "HKCU\MyKey\Test\", answer(5)
I don't get any errors but the registry value doesn't change.
I've tried looking in the WSH and VBscript documentation downloaded from
microsoft and looked in other WSH reference sources but I can't find out how
to do this.

"Michael Harris" <Please....@To.NewsGroup> wrote in message
news:ulN$i1qQA...@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com...

> As of WSH 2.0, you should be getting an array with elements that are
variants of subtype byte.
>
> sKey = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\mykey\binKey\"
> set shell = createobject("wscript.shell")
> val = shell.regread(sKey)
> msgbox typename(val)
> msgbox typename(val(0))
> msgbox val(0)
>
> --
> Michael Harris
> Microsoft.MVP.Scripting
> --
>
>
> >

Al Dunbar

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Nov 1, 2000, 9:17:46 AM11/1/00

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To write to the registry you need to include the third RegWrite argument,
strType. In this case you should use REG_BINARY, and keep in mind that it
does not accept an array such as returned by RegRead, but rather a binary
(not string) value Dino Esposito's book "Windows Script Host Programmer's
reference suggests the for-next loop below for converting the array returned
by RegRead to the appropriate binary representation. I can't quite find his
info on RegWrite, but perhaps you need to prefix the binary string with the
hex constant prefix as in my call to RegWrite

str = ""
for each char in answer
datum = right( "00" & hex(char), 2 )
str = datum & str
next

WshShell.RegWrite "HKCU\MyKey\Test\", "&h" & str, REG_BINARY

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Michael Harris

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Nov 1, 2000, 10:57:32 PM11/1/00

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You can't RegWrite a binary key/value bigger than a Long (as documented) using the WshShell object.

--
Michael Harris
Microsoft.MVP.Scripting
--

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