How do I read the registry in 32-bit c# app such that registry redirection works on 64-bit Windows 7

Question

My boss just got Windows 7 and he tried running one of our installers which runs perfectly fine under XP. On Windows 7, the installer runs without giving any errors. However, it does not create registry keys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE{Company}{product}. These keys get created correctly under XP.

Has anyone encountered this issue? I suspect it is a rights/security issue but I'm not sure and I don't have Windows 7 to experiment with.

EDIT

The computer in question is a 64-bit machine running 64-bit Windows. It turns out Windows 7 redirects 32-bit applications to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node{Company}{product}. The problem is my application code tries to access the registry using a hardcoded value like this:

var t = Registry.GetValue("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\..., "ValueName", DefaultValue);

So, my new question is how do I access the registry such that the Windows 9 registry redirection will just work?

Answer 1

Registry Reflection

Code Sample

Answer 2

In the C Windows API this is done by setting the samDesired parameter in the RegOpenKeyEx call to KEY_WOW64_64KEY. This means that the lookup of the registry value will map onto the regular 64-bit entry, rather than the WOW32Node one. I can't see how you would achieve this in .Net though as the Registry class doesn't appear to support these operations, but maybe it's provided through a newer class?

Answer 3

After more digging I came across this link which describes the registry access rules for .NET applications. My program had initially been targeted for "AnyCpu" which causes the app to target the 64-bit registry even though Windows installed it under the Wow6432Node. By setting the target to "x86" my program "magically" started accessing the registry under the Wow6432Node. Go figure!