Registry entry problems

[gerritvn]

We are using IA Developer 10.
Our product requires registry entries to be installed in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GPVNO
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GPVNO

It must also install for All users.

We get inconsistent results with different versions of Windows
Windows XP Pro (SP3) 32-bit and Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit:
For current user (Administrator):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GPVNO and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GPVNO are installed.
For Standard user:
Only HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\GPVNO is installed. No error or warning for HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GPVNO which is not installed. This is fine for our software.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit:
Only HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\GPVNO is installed for the Admin user doing the installation. None of the other keys are installed and no error or warning is given. This is not good.

An explanation/solution will be appreciated.

A general comment: The only documentation IA seems to provide, is the Help file which is a "how-to" guide which does not explain concepts in any depth. If you could point us to such documentation, it will also be appreciated.

[giaviv]

Dear gerritvn,

Could you please send your project (or its portion that writes to the registry) to support at installaware.com?

Thank you

[gerritvn]

You can download the project from:
http://www.gpvno.co.za/temp/Prod.zip
Download build from:
http://www.gpvno.co.za/inet/Winet633.exe

[giaviv]

Dear gerritvn,

I noticed that in your project, you are not checking the machine to see if it is running 64 Bit.
On 64 Bit machines, the registry is divided into a 32 Bit hive and a 64 Bit hive.
Therefore, to write to the section of the registry you want on a 64 Bit machine, you will have to call the Set 64 Bit Mode command to let the machine know that you are writing to the 64 Bit section of the registry.
Check out the Win64 Setup template for a great example!

[gerritvn]

Thanks for the hint about the two registry hives on 64 bit Windows. We found that IA actually installs correctly on 64 bit machines without setting the 64 bit mode in that it installs the registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\GPVNO\... which is correct since it is a 32-bit program. Setting the 64 bit mode as in the example does not work.

You did not answer the first part of the question: Can one install the CURRENT_USER registry settings to all users and not just the current user doing the installation?

[giaviv]

Dear gerritvn,

You should be able to write to the LOCAL_MACHINE hive even if you are installing for a single user.
After take my comment about 64 Bit into account, is that not the case for you?

[gerritvn]

The LOCAL_MACHINE question has been answered, thank you.

The remaining question is about installing registry settings for all users to eventually get into HKEY_CURRENT_USER/SOFTWARE/GPVNO when another user than the installing user logs on.

[giaviv]

Dear gerritvn,

As far as I know, writing to a different user's CURRENT_USER hive is not possible due to Windows limitations.