setRegistry on Windows 64-bit

[Ledigimate]

Hi

I'm using LiveCode on Windows 8 (64-bit) and trying to change registry entries which are also accessed by some other non-LiveCode applications, located under
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\myCompany\"
but the values I set with the setRegistry function are only visible to LiveCode and not to any other non-LiveCode applications.

I know that the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\" key contains registry entries for 32-bit applications, but not even 32-bit applications can see the changes made by my LiveCode application.
It's giving me a headache. It's like my LiveCode app sees a seperate version of the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\" key. How can LiveCode have its own seperate version of "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\" ?????

Can someone else please test this on your 64-bit Windows machine and post what you find?

Thanks in advance

[Mark]

Hi,

To make this work, you probably need to start your app as administrator.

Kind regards,

Mark

[Ledigimate]

Thank you, Mark! That resolved the issue. Windows 8 must have sandboxed LiveCode by default.

[Ledigimate]

Now, I have another issue with setRegistry:

I need to be able to change an entry only if its key already exists. How can I prevent the key from being created when it doesn't exist? The queryRegistry isn't of much help here because it returns empty for keys that doesn't exist. It also returns empty if the key exists and the default value is not set. I need to be able to detect if the key exists before attempting to change the entries it contains.

Please advise?

[Ledigimate]

Hello fellow LoveCoders,

After a long search, I came to the conclusion that I will have to create a LiveCode external with a function that can probe for the existence of a value in the Windows 32-bit registry. And so I did!

I wrote a "regValueExists" function that takes 3 arguments: pRootKeyName, pSubKeyPath, pValueName
and returns true if the value exists in the registry, or false if it doesn't exist.

I've attached the external to this post. To use it in LiveCode, do the following:

• Extract the Zip-archive and copy "windowsregistry.dll" to the following 2 folders on your computer:
  <User Extensions>/Externals
  <User Extensions>/Runtime/Windows/x86-32/Externals
  where <Users Extensions> is the location specified in "Edit > Preferences > Files & Memory > User Extensions". If one or both of the "Externals" folders above don't exist then you should create them first.
• Edit the "Externals.txt" file in each of the "Externals" folders above, adding the following line:
  windowsregistry external,windowsregistry.dll
  If the "Externals.txt" file does not exist in one or both of the "Externals" folders, then you should create it.
• Restart LiveCode.

Remember to also add a reference to this external in the properties of each stack that utilise it, or else it won't work in a standalone, e.g. Externals\windowsregistry.dll

After the above steps, you can call the "regValueExists" function to probe for the existence of a specified value in the Windows 32-bit registry, as in the following example:

Code: Select all

put regValueExists("HKEY_CURRENT_USER", "SOFTWARE\myCompany", "myValue") into tValueExists

For some reason it works as part of a script, but not in the message box. Nevertheless, it works .

I hope someone else finds this useful. I needed it because I needed to probe for the existence of the registry value before changing it with the setRegistry function.

Kind regards,

Gerrie