How should a PB developer avoid writing to the Windows Registry? What are the best practices? Does Appeon have a White Paper or has there been an Elevate presentation on the subject? Are there code examples?

Are the cursed .ini files from the 1980's (queue the blood-curdling scream) the solution?

The Windows software development community has been encouraged to utilize the Registry for decades, ever since Microsoft unleashed it. That's certainly one factor on why we have PowerScript functions that make it more convenient for us to read from and write to the Registry. I completely understand the security issues concerning the use of the Registry and I get why a lot of companies prevent their users and the applications they use from writing to the Registry.

Like a lot of developers, it's just about all I can do each workday to complete my assignments on time. By and large, my days (and most nights and weekends) are pretty much filled with work, family, obligations and responsibilities. OK - that's life in the 21st century. While there may very well be strategies (for any languages) for replacing use of the Registry, I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing more than maybe a quick blurb about them. Usually it's blanket comments similar to "We shouldn't be writing to the Registry.", but I admittedly don't devote any time to perusing software development journals. I suspect there are many developers that share similar sentiments.

It's not enough to only say "this is bad / not allowed / blocked / a security risk / etc." How should we be addressing this issue?

Hi David,

You probably already checked for this but, any chance that the Windows update changed the "Enabled" setting under the policy "User Account Control: Virtualize file and Registry write failures to per-user locations" to "Disabled"? Any chance the same policy may have been changed, for certain users, by network admin folks?

Regards,

Mark

The Virtual Store stuff has been giving us problems for over 2 years now. Some windows update will fix things, the next one will break things.

I think there'll be way less problems if we don't write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, but use HKEY_CURRENT_USER instead. That will make our programs less likely to suffer from group policies.

If possible at all, write your stuff to a database and avoid registries completely.

just my 2 pesetas,

regards.

Hi Dave;

  You might be experiencing new Windows policy restrictions. I've experienced this before & why I don't personally use the Registry in my PB apps. When you get into environments where the workstations are really locked down, writing to the registry can often be fully restricted.

  Does the app work okay registry wise when the app is run "as Administrator"?

Regards ... Chris

I hate the Virtual Store. It screws up everything.
Try deleting the Virtual Store for your application, then re-running the app.

DELETE the Virtual Store, and try again.

The <app> VirtualStore/hive location is here:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\<app>

I've been advocating for years to NOT use the registry but most companies I've been at don't think it's a priority.  Then they fail a security audit and...

Anyway an approach I've taken is to write these things to the database which can be secured in any number of ways.  It also offers the advantage of being portable so the user's settings can be applied regardless of where they log in.