writing registry in wix - problem illustrated with sample wxs file.

Answer 1

Are you using WiX v2? Instead of creating the registry value with two Registry entries, just combine it all into one line.

<Registry Id="TestKey" Root="HKLM" Key="SOFTWARE\testCorp" Name="TestValue" Value="123" Type="string" Action="write" />

That's usually a lot easier. If you really want to nest them then I recommend leaving the Registry/@Action attribute off of the parent registry key so it doesn't actually end up in the MSI. Just organizes the child elements.

Note the syntax is a bit different in WiX v3.