How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

Niharika — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:30:05 GMT

Hey I am getting the below error, do you have any idea how to resolve it?

WshShell.RegRead: Invalid root in registry key "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App paths\winzip32.exe

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

jeff — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:09:29 GMT

Old topic, but I had an idea...

reg query or reg compare

Perhaps you could write a .bat to do the compare for you. Or you could have a script call the .bat or powershell script??

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

ChalkOutline — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 07:48:21 GMT

This is good advice, but:

"If you run into situations where it doesn’t work, please let us know."

If you read a MULTI_SZ (into an array), the array returned is Null regardless of whether the key either doesn't exist or exists and has no value set.

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

Larry — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 19:05:56 GMT

If you're looking to see if a key (not an item) exists, substitute strValueName = "".

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

Enigma — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:40:22 GMT

"THE REGISTRY KEY DOES NOT EXIST" Fix: I'd like to REALLY reiterate hitchy's comment that you must change the Get_Value method to the right one. I was banging my head until I scrolled down, read the posts and realized why it couldn't find my BINARY value. Helps to read the methods available for StdRegProv: msdn.microsoft.com/.../aa393664(v=vs.85).aspx

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

GaryM — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:27:27 GMT

I've been looking at modifying this routine. This is my first script, so please excuse any lack of knowledge.

What I want to do once this has found the key is then to say, find a value within the key, and if its equal to 272 - then to change it to 0 - is that possible?

Thanks.

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

Brian — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:34:34 GMT

The only issue is that if you are looking for the Key (Default) and no value is set, then you will get a null value back even though the (Default) string value exists.

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

MeltonDBA — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:58:59 GMT

How can I handle it if I don't know the full strValueName? Example: Determine if SQL Server is installed using this script. I know under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services holds the registry keys of each service Windows sees is installed. So I want to look for SQL Server service, which the key will list as the name of the instance (default being mssqlserver, named instance being mssql$nameIT). So I know the key will contain "MSSQL", but for this script to check multiple servers I don't know the full name of the key.

Suggestions?

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

Tuscatsi — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:43:15 GMT

The WMI documentation page [aa390788(VS.85).aspx] states that GetStringValue is a function that returns zero for success and non-zero for failure.

I can use it in VBScript as you describe, but when using it in Excel VBA I get the error "the object invoked has disconnected from its clients" when I retrieve an item that doesn't exist.

re: How Can I Tell Whether a Value Exists in the Registry?

hitchy — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:11:22 GMT

In regard to the "The registry key does not exist." return, are you sure the value you are looking for is a string and not a DWORD? If you are after a DWORD, substitute DWORD for String in the code ie.'GetStringValue' becomes 'GetDwordValue'