Groovy Shell warning Could not open create prefs root node

Question

I tried to open the Groovy Shell  groovysh  on Windows 8 and got the following output   java util prefs WindowsPreferences  lt init gt  WARNING  Could not open create prefs root node Software JavaSoft Prefs  at root 0x80000002  Windows RegCreateKeyEx      returned error code 5    After printing the above message the shell started as expected

User · Answer

The problem is indeed the register key that is missing. It can be created manually

OR

it can be created automagically by running the program as administrator once. That will give the program the permissions required, and when it will be ran as normal it will still work correctly.

User · Answer

This happened to me   Apparently it is because Java does not have permission to create registry keys   See  Java  java util Preferences Failing

User · Answer

I was able to resolve the problem by manually creating the following registry key   HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft Prefs

User · Answer

The problem is that simple console can t edit the registry  No need to edit the registry by hand  just launch the groovysh once with administrative priveleges  All subsequent launches work without error

User · Answer

This is actually a JDK bug  It has been reported several times over the years  but only in 8139507 was it finally taken seriously by Oracle   The problem was in the JDK source code for WindowsPreferences java  In this class  both nodes userRoot and systemRoot were declared static as in          User root node      static final Preferences userRoot        new WindowsPreferences USER ROOT NATIVE HANDLE  WINDOWS ROOT PATH           System root node      static final Preferences systemRoot       new WindowsPreferences SYSTEM ROOT NATIVE HANDLE  WINDOWS ROOT PATH     This means that the first time the class is referenced both static variables would be initiated and by this the Registry Key for HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft Prefs    system tree  will be attempted to be created if it doesn t already exist   So even if the user took every precaution in his own code and never touched or referenced the system tree  then the JVM would actually still try to instantiate systemRoot  thus causing the warning  It is an interesting subtle bug   There s a fix committed to the JDK source in June 2016 and it is part of Java9 onwards  There s also a backport for Java8 which is in u202   What you see is really a warning from the JDK s internal logger  It is not an exception  I believe that the warning can be safely ignored      unless the user code is indeed wanting the system preferences  but that is very rarely the case    Bonus info  The bug did not reveal itself in versions prior to Java 1 7 21  because up until then the JRE installer would create Registry key HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft Prefs for you and this would effectively hide the bug   On the other hand you ve never really been required to run an installer in order to have a JRE on your machine  or at least this hasn t been Sun Oracle s intent  As you may be aware Oracle has been distributing the JRE for Windows in  tar gz format for many years

User · Answer

I was getting the following message   Could not open create prefs root node Software JavaSoft Prefs at root 0x80000002   and it was gone after creating one of these registry keys  mine is 64 bit so I tried only that   32 bit Windows HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft Prefs  64 bit Windows HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Wow6432Node JavaSoft Prefs

User · Answer

Had a similar problem when starting apache jmeter on windows 8 64 bit     apache-jmeter-2 13 bin gt jmeter java util prefs WindowsPreferences  lt init gt  WARNING  Could not open create prefs root node Software JavaSoft Prefs     at root 0x80000002  Windows RegCreateKeyEx      returned error code 5    Successfully used Dennis Traub solution  with Mkorsch explanations  Or you can create a file with the extension  reg  and write into it the following   Windows Registry Editor Version 5 00   HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE JavaSoft Prefs        then execute it

User · Answer

If anyone is trying to solve this on a 64-bit version of Windows  you might need to create the following key   HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Wow6432Node JavaSoft Prefs

User · Answer

Dennis answer is correct  However I would like to explain the solution in a bit more detailed way  for Windows User     Go into your Start Menu and type regedit into the search field  Navigate to path HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft  Windows 10 seems to now have this here  HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software WOW6432Node JavaSoft  Right click on the JavaSoft folder and click on New -  Key Name the new Key Prefs and everything should work    Alternatively  save and execute a   reg file with the following content   Windows Registry Editor Version 5 00  HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software JavaSoft Prefs

[windows] Groovy Shell warning "Could not open/create prefs root node ..."

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