[RESOLVED] Editing Registry, No Access with Admin Rights

[chris1990]

I'm making a program that will disable forced automatic restart on update, to do this it needs to write to the HKLM registry.

When i run the program in VS2010 it returns an error "UnauthorizedAccessException", i assumed this was beacuse it was running without admin permissions however when i run the program as an administrator it doesn't make any changes to the registry or report any errors.

Imports Microsoft.Win32

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub BtnRun_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnRun.Click
        QuickFix()
        Timer1.Enabled = True
        ProgressBar1.Value = "0"
    End Sub

    Private Sub CheckStatus()
        Dim readValue As String
        readValue = My.Computer.Registry.GetValue _
        ("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU", "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers", Nothing)
        If readValue = "1" Then
            MsgBox("Automatic forced restart is already disabled", MsgBoxStyle.Information, "Quick Fix 001: Already Disabled.")
        Else
            MsgBox("Automatic forced restart is enabled", MsgBoxStyle.Information, "Quick Fix 001: Already Disabled.")
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub QuickFix()
        ''My.Computer.Registry.LocalMachine.CreateSubKey("SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU")
        My.Computer.Registry.LocalMachine.SetValue("SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU", _
        "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers", "1")
        My.Computer.Registry.LocalMachine.Close()
    End Sub

    Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick
        ProgressBar1.Value = ProgressBar1.Value + 1
        If ProgressBar1.Value = 50 Then
            CheckStatus()
        End If
        If ProgressBar1.Value = 100 Then
            Timer1.Enabled = False
        End If
    End Sub

    Private Sub BtnCancel_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnCancel.Click
        End
    End Sub

End Class

[weirddemon]

By default, you can only read from the registry. Writing to the registry requires you pass a boolean as an argument when writing.

Also, never, ever use End unless you absolutely have to. Instead, use Me.Close. And, MsgBox is an outdated class carried over from VB6. Instead, use MessageBox.Show with the appropriate overloads.

Finally, your CheckStatus method should not be a sub. Instead, make it a function. Methods and functions as essentially the same, except that a function can return a value. So instead of running a sub and throwing up a MessageBox within it, you should make it a function (as a boolean) and call the messagebox from the value returned from the function.

[chris1990]

Thanks for your help, and the info on the MsgBox, i've only ever used VB6 and that was a few years back, this is my first time using VB.net.