C# Access 64 bit Registry

Question

I was wondering if it was possible to access the following registry key in C# on a 64 bit pc.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

When accessing on a 32bit pc it works fine but on 64 it re - directs it to the native 64bit path of HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node which has different keys. I have looked through various articles on this but can't really find a definite answer on how to access the 32bit key in a 64bit pc in C#. Thanks.

Answer 1

If you are targetting the .Net Framework version 4.0 or above then you can do this by passing the RegistryView.Registry32 value when opening the desired registry key.

If you are targetting a previous version of the .Net Framework then you need to use P/Invoke to call RegOpenKeyEx directly yourself allowing you to pass the KEY_WOW64_32KEY flag.

There is a guide here that goes into more detail:

• How to read the 64 bit registry from a 32 bit application or vice versa