VBS Windows 64bit/32bit registry read problem

Question

What I am trying to achieve I feel should be fairly simple yet it is driving me totally insane.

Background: We run a system monitoring tools across our clients which has the ability to run .vbs scripts remotely. This works very well normally.

What I am trying to achieve currently is being able to read a line from the registry on both 32bit versions of windows and 64 bit versions.

The Client side.exe which monitors the machine runs as a 32bit process on BOTH platforms (This is the trick).

I want to read a key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ for example. My script works perfectly fine on 32bit. example: objRegistry.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\anything")

The problem I have is when I run this same line on a 64bit folder is is automatically looking in the wow64node folder. Example: objRegistry.RegRead("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\wow64node\").

I need to have it checking in EXACTLY the same place.

The key it is reading is part of a program that runs both 32bit and 64bit versions which is why it is not installed in the wow64node folder.

At this point I am unable to run the .VBS script as a 64bit process which would solve my problem entirely as it would then not look in the wow64node folder.

If anyone has any ideas at all please let me know.

possible duplicate of How do I read 64-bit Registry values from VBScript running as a an msi post-installation task? — Helen
Possible duplicate of How do I read 64-bit Registry values from VBScript running as a an msi post-installation task? — klaus triendl

Ben Ben · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-09T23:36:50

I solved it using this piece of code.

Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
sPath = ReadRegStr (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET\2.0.50727.0", "Path", 64)
WScript.Echo sPath

' Reads a REG_SZ value from the local computer's registry using WMI.
' Parameters:
'   RootKey - The registry hive (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa390788(VS.85).aspx for a list of possible values).
'   Key - The key that contains the desired value.
'   Value - The value that you want to get.
'   RegType - The registry bitness: 32 or 64.
'
Function ReadRegStr (RootKey, Key, Value, RegType)
    Dim oCtx, oLocator, oReg, oInParams, oOutParams

    Set oCtx = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemNamedValueSet")
    oCtx.Add "__ProviderArchitecture", RegType

    Set oLocator = CreateObject("Wbemscripting.SWbemLocator")
    Set oReg = oLocator.ConnectServer("", "root\default", "", "", , , , oCtx).Get("StdRegProv")

    Set oInParams = oReg.Methods_("GetStringValue").InParameters
    oInParams.hDefKey = RootKey
    oInParams.sSubKeyName = Key
    oInParams.sValueName = Value

    Set oOutParams = oReg.ExecMethod_("GetStringValue", oInParams, , oCtx)

    ReadRegStr = oOutParams.sValue
End Function

Thank you Helen for your help!

VBS Windows 64bit/32bit registry read problem

2 Answers