Registry Reading and Writing Made Simple, Part 1

The introduction of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) as a core OS component in Windows 2000 made many administrative scripting tasks far easier, but Microsoft has recognized that registry management still plays an important role in Windows management. The company has provided several tools for reading from and writing to the registry in a script. These tools include:

*Registry import (.reg) files. You can modify the registry by using a .reg file and the Regedit /s command, but this method lets you only update the registry. You can't read data from the registry, and there's no error checking. Also, a .reg file can update the registry only on a local computer, not a remote computer.

*The Reg.exe command-line utility. You can use the Reg.exe command-line utility, which is part of the OS in Windows XP and part of the resource kits for Win2K and Windows NT, to update the registry. You can also use Reg.exe to read data from the registry. However, to use the output, you have to parse it, which is an error-prone process. . . .