Python information and short questions megathread.

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Kerpal: Jul 20, 2003; Well that's weird.

Does anyone have experience with the _winreg module? I'm trying to write a script that deletes a registry key in HKLM\Software\Classes\Installer\Products, however the _winreg DeleteKey method cannot delete keys with subkeys, which gives a WindowsError exception "Access is denied" error 5. The only solutions I could think of was to create a function that recursively deletes every subkey in the input key before deleting the primary key. I'm trying to do this remotely, so I have to be able to connect to a remote registry. Another solution was to call the reg command like:

reg delete "\\\\%s1\\HKLM\Software\Classes\Installer\Products\%s2"

Where %s1 is the computer and %s2 is the product key I'm trying to delete. Running this command produces a different error, "The procedure number is out of range." Running the same command on the local machine worked fine.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 15:24

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# ¿ May 20, 2024 06:36

Kerpal: Jul 20, 2003; Well that's weird.

Sweet, thanks Gripper! That works exactly like I wanted it to. The only thing I changed was the key_str argument, instead I'm using:

Python code:

HKLM = _winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
key_str = _winreg.ConnectRegistry(r'\\computer_name', HKLM)

to connect to the remote machine. The code traversed all the keys and removed them, exactly like I need. Your enumerate keys function looked very similar to what I was trying, which started as something like:

Python code:

def delete_subkeys(key, delete_list):
    for i in delete_list:
        product_key = i[0]
        c = 0
        skey = _winreg.OpenKey(key, product_key)
        subkeys = []
        while True:
            try:
                sub_key = _winreg.EnumKey(skey, c)
                s = '%s\\%s' % (product_key, sub_key)
                subkeys.append(s)
                c += 1
            except WindowsError:
                break

I'm trying to understand how you're traversing each key, because to me that's the real trick here. I guess it works because you're using enum_keys as a recursive function to traverse each subkey until the WindowsError exception is caught? Thanks for the help.

Kerpal fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Oct 4, 2012

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 21:03

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Python information and short questions megathread.