How can I get the value of a registry key from within a batch script

Question

I need to use a REG QUERY command to view the value of a key and set the result into a variable with this command   FOR  F  tokens 2  delims         A IN   REG QUERY  KeyName   v ValueName   DO SET Variable   B   But if the key doesnt exists i get an error shown in the console  I need to hide this error  I tried putting a 2 nul after the command to stop the stderr  but this works if i only call the command   REG QUERY  KeyName   v ValueName 2 gt nul   If i put it into the FOR command like this   FOR  F  tokens 2  delims         A IN   REG QUERY  KeyName   v ValueName   DO SET Variable   B 2 gt nul   The error is shown  So does anyone know how to hide the error  Or maybe another command too see if a key exists or not   Thanks  PS  I m using Windows XP

User · Answer

This work for me with variable that contains spaces on Windows 7:

FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3*" %%A IN (`REG QUERY "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SomeAPP" /v ValueName`) DO (
    set appdir=%%A %%B
    )
ECHO %appdir%

Variable A contains all data before first space, B - rest part of ValueName (including further spaces), so appdir = ValueName

User · Answer

For some reason Patrick Cuff s code doesn t work on my system  Windows 7  probably due to tryingToBeClever s comment  Modifying it a little did the trick    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found

User · Answer

echo Off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS  set KEY NAME  HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft NET Framework Setup  set VALUE NAME release   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   S  v  VALUE NAME  endlocal   dot put   at the end of KEY NAME

User · Answer

Thanks  i just need to use   SETLOCAL EnableExtensions   And put a   2  gt nul   Into the REG QUERY called in the FOR command  Thanks a lot again

User · Answer

Great level of solutions here   My little grain of salt as the solution  Patrick Cuff did not work out of the box  I had 2 problems   I use Windows 7    changed to  skip 2  The value of the registry value had a space in it Value Value   C  Program Files       Here is the solution I found  taking 4 tokens and setting ValueValue to   C and   D    Thanks  Ivan    setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 2 tokens 1-4    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C   D    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo   KEY NAME      VALUE NAME   not found

User · Answer

echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKLM SOFTWARE Wow6432Node Acme Software Inc Common set VALUE NAME InstallDir  FOR  F  tokens 2     A IN   REG exe query   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME     DO  set pInstallDir   B  echo  pInstallDir    That works for me in Win7 where the key has a space and the value also has a space  So saving the above in c  temp as test bat  open a cmd window and run it   C  temp test  C  Program Files  x86  acme Software Inc APP

User · Answer

This works for me    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 4 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found      usebackq is needed since the command to REG QUERY uses double quotes   skip 4 ignores all the output except for the line that has the value name  type and value  if it exists   2  gt nul prevents the error text from appearing    is the escape character that lets you put the  gt  in the for command   When I run the script above as given  I get this output   Value Name   DefaultColor Value Type   REG DWORD Value Value   0x0   If I change the value of VALUE NAME to BogusValue then I get this    HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  BogusValue not found

User · Answer

Thanks  i just need to use   SETLOCAL EnableExtensions   And put a   2  gt nul   Into the REG QUERY called in the FOR command  Thanks a lot again

User · Answer

To get a particular answer to the registry value you may use the following query   REG QUERY  Key Name   v  Value Name   s  eg   REG QUERY  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor   v  EnableExtensions   s  here   v    Queries for a specific registry key values    s    Queries all subkeys and values recursively  like dir  s

User · Answer

For Windows 7  Professional  64-bit - can t speak for the others  I see that REG no longer spits out     REG EXE VERSION 3 0   as it does in XP  So the above needs to be modified to use  skip 2   instead of 4 - which makes things messy if you want your script to be portable  Although it s much more heavyweight and complex  a WMIC based solution may be better

User · Answer

This works if the value contains a space   FOR  F  skip 2 tokens 1 2     A IN   REG QUERY   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME   2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName       echo Value Name    ValueName      echo Value Type    ValueType      echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo   KEY NAME     VALUE NAME   not found

User · Answer

set regVar LocalPrjPath  LocalPrjPath  set regVar Path  HKEY CURRENT USER Software xyz KeyPath          Retrieve VAR1     FOR  F  skip 2 tokens 2      A IN   reg exe query  regVar Path   v  regVar LocalPrjPath    DO set  VAR1   B

User · Answer

With regedit   echo off setlocal   if the scrit is not ran as administrator     and the key does not require admin permissions set   COMPAT LAYER RunAsInvoker  set  quot key   1 quot  set  quot value   2 quot   regedit  e  quot   reg quot   quot  key  quot    for  f  quot tokens 1   delims   quot    a in   find   quot  quot  quot  value  quot  quot   quot   quot   reg quot    do if  quot    b quot  neq  quot  quot  echo    b del  q   reg  endlocal  Example  call regreader bat  quot HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft NET Framework Setup NDP v3 0 Setup 1033  quot  Version  output   3 0 30729 4926

User · Answer

Thanks  i just need to use   SETLOCAL EnableExtensions   And put a   2  gt nul   Into the REG QUERY called in the FOR command  Thanks a lot again

User · Answer

For some reason Patrick Cuff s code doesn t work on my system  Windows 7  probably due to tryingToBeClever s comment  Modifying it a little did the trick    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found

User · Answer

Based on tryingToBeClever solution  which I happened to also stumble upon and fixed myself by trial-and-error before finding it   I also suggest passing the result output of reg query through find in order to filter undesired lines due to the   REG EXE VERSION x y inconsistency  The find filtering and tokens tweaking also allows to pick exactly what we want  typically the value   Also added quotes to avoid unexpected results with key value names containing spaces  Final result proposed when we are only interested in fetching the value   echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKCU Software Microsoft Command Processor set VALUE NAME DefaultColor for  F  quot usebackq tokens 1 2   quot    A IN   reg query  quot  KEY NAME  quot   v  quot  VALUE NAME  quot  2  gt nul    find  quot  VALUE NAME  quot    do     echo   C    A potential caveat of using find is that the errorlevel set by reg when errors occur is now obfuscated so one should only use this approach for keys known to be there and or after a previous validation  A tiny additional optimization  add skip 1 to avoid processing the first line of output  can be done in cases when the key name also contains the value name  as it is the case with HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion and CurrentVersion  but removes most flexibility so should only be used in particular use-cases

User · Answer

echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion App Paths awhost32 exe set VALUE NAME Path for  F  usebackq tokens 3    A IN   reg query   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME   2  gt nul    find   VALUE NAME     do     echo   A     How do you handle a space in the   A variable   This results in C  Program   The actual path is C  Program Files Symantec pcAnywhere

User · Answer

set regVar LocalPrjPath  LocalPrjPath  set regVar Path  HKEY CURRENT USER Software xyz KeyPath          Retrieve VAR1     FOR  F  skip 2 tokens 2      A IN   reg exe query  regVar Path   v  regVar LocalPrjPath    DO set  VAR1   B

User · Answer

This works for me    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 4 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found      usebackq is needed since the command to REG QUERY uses double quotes   skip 4 ignores all the output except for the line that has the value name  type and value  if it exists   2  gt nul prevents the error text from appearing    is the escape character that lets you put the  gt  in the for command   When I run the script above as given  I get this output   Value Name   DefaultColor Value Type   REG DWORD Value Value   0x0   If I change the value of VALUE NAME to BogusValue then I get this    HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  BogusValue not found

User · Answer

To get a particular answer to the registry value you may use the following query   REG QUERY  Key Name   v  Value Name   s  eg   REG QUERY  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor   v  EnableExtensions   s  here   v    Queries for a specific registry key values    s    Queries all subkeys and values recursively  like dir  s

User · Answer

This works for me    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 4 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found      usebackq is needed since the command to REG QUERY uses double quotes   skip 4 ignores all the output except for the line that has the value name  type and value  if it exists   2  gt nul prevents the error text from appearing    is the escape character that lets you put the  gt  in the for command   When I run the script above as given  I get this output   Value Name   DefaultColor Value Type   REG DWORD Value Value   0x0   If I change the value of VALUE NAME to BogusValue then I get this    HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  BogusValue not found

User · Answer

For Windows 7  Professional  64-bit - can t speak for the others  I see that REG no longer spits out     REG EXE VERSION 3 0   as it does in XP  So the above needs to be modified to use  skip 2   instead of 4 - which makes things messy if you want your script to be portable  Although it s much more heavyweight and complex  a WMIC based solution may be better

User · Answer

You can get the value of a registry key as follows   echo OFF setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set REG NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Test  set KEY NAME TestVal  FOR  F  usebackq skip 2 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  REG NAME   v  KEY NAME  2  gt nul   DO        echo   A     C   pause   those who wonder how to add reg keys  here is a way   REGEDIT4     ECHO OFF   CLS   REGEDIT EXE  S    f0    EXIT   HKEY CURRENT USER Software Test   TestVal   Succeeded

User · Answer

I ve come across many errors on Windows XP computers when using WMIC  eg due to corrupted files on machines   Hence imo best not to use WMIC for Win XP in code  No problems with WMIC on Win 7 though

User · Answer

This works for me    echo OFF  setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 4 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo  KEY NAME   VALUE NAME  not found      usebackq is needed since the command to REG QUERY uses double quotes   skip 4 ignores all the output except for the line that has the value name  type and value  if it exists   2  gt nul prevents the error text from appearing    is the escape character that lets you put the  gt  in the for command   When I run the script above as given  I get this output   Value Name   DefaultColor Value Type   REG DWORD Value Value   0x0   If I change the value of VALUE NAME to BogusValue then I get this    HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  BogusValue not found

User · Answer

Based on tryingToBeClever solution  which I happened to also stumble upon and fixed myself by trial-and-error before finding it   I also suggest passing the result output of reg query through find in order to filter undesired lines due to the   REG EXE VERSION x y inconsistency  The find filtering and tokens tweaking also allows to pick exactly what we want  typically the value   Also added quotes to avoid unexpected results with key value names containing spaces  Final result proposed when we are only interested in fetching the value   echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKCU Software Microsoft Command Processor set VALUE NAME DefaultColor for  F  quot usebackq tokens 1 2   quot    A IN   reg query  quot  KEY NAME  quot   v  quot  VALUE NAME  quot  2  gt nul    find  quot  VALUE NAME  quot    do     echo   C    A potential caveat of using find is that the errorlevel set by reg when errors occur is now obfuscated so one should only use this approach for keys known to be there and or after a previous validation  A tiny additional optimization  add skip 1 to avoid processing the first line of output  can be done in cases when the key name also contains the value name  as it is the case with HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion and CurrentVersion  but removes most flexibility so should only be used in particular use-cases

User · Answer

This one-liner is pretty much the same as your original try with a couple of additions   It works with paths including spaces  and works in both XP and Windows 7 even if the key is not found  and hides the error     fn  will be empty if the key does not exist   This example gets the current desktop background filename  for  f  quot tokens 2  quot    a in   reg query  quot HKEY CURRENT USER Control Panel Desktop quot   v Wallpaper 2  gt   amp 1  find  quot REG  quot    do  set fn   b  This command uses tokens 2  with   a as the loop variable but consumes   b to correctly handle spaces  When using tokens 2   the loop variable   a is assigned the value in the second token  in this case  REG SZ  and   b is assigned the remainder of the line after the next group of delimiter characters  including all internal delimiter characters  This means that   b will correctly replicate delimiter characters   even if multiple delimiter characters are clustered together  For example  the value might be C  A  weird path blah png  This technique of reading the value would correctly preserve the two spaces between C  A and weird

User · Answer

echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Windows CurrentVersion App Paths awhost32 exe set VALUE NAME Path for  F  usebackq tokens 3    A IN   reg query   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME   2  gt nul    find   VALUE NAME     do     echo   A     How do you handle a space in the   A variable   This results in C  Program   The actual path is C  Program Files Symantec pcAnywhere

User · Answer

Thanks  i just need to use   SETLOCAL EnableExtensions   And put a   2  gt nul   Into the REG QUERY called in the FOR command  Thanks a lot again

User · Answer

This work for me with variable that contains spaces on Windows 7:

FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3*" %%A IN (`REG QUERY "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SomeAPP" /v ValueName`) DO (
    set appdir=%%A %%B
    )
ECHO %appdir%

Variable A contains all data before first space, B - rest part of ValueName (including further spaces), so appdir = ValueName

User · Answer

Great level of solutions here   My little grain of salt as the solution  Patrick Cuff did not work out of the box  I had 2 problems   I use Windows 7    changed to  skip 2  The value of the registry value had a space in it Value Value   C  Program Files       Here is the solution I found  taking 4 tokens and setting ValueValue to   C and   D    Thanks  Ivan    setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor  set VALUE NAME DefaultColor  FOR  F  usebackq skip 2 tokens 1-4    A IN   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   v  VALUE NAME  2  nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C   D    if defined ValueName        echo Value Name    ValueName       echo Value Type    ValueType       echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo   KEY NAME      VALUE NAME   not found

User · Answer

echo off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set KEY NAME HKLM SOFTWARE Wow6432Node Acme Software Inc Common set VALUE NAME InstallDir  FOR  F  tokens 2     A IN   REG exe query   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME     DO  set pInstallDir   B  echo  pInstallDir    That works for me in Win7 where the key has a space and the value also has a space  So saving the above in c  temp as test bat  open a cmd window and run it   C  temp test  C  Program Files  x86  acme Software Inc APP

User · Answer

This works if the value contains a space   FOR  F  skip 2 tokens 1 2     A IN   REG QUERY   KEY NAME    v   VALUE NAME   2  gt nul   DO       set ValueName   A     set ValueType   B     set ValueValue   C    if defined ValueName       echo Value Name    ValueName      echo Value Type    ValueType      echo Value Value    ValueValue    else        echo   KEY NAME     VALUE NAME   not found

User · Answer

With regedit   echo off setlocal   if the scrit is not ran as administrator     and the key does not require admin permissions set   COMPAT LAYER RunAsInvoker  set  quot key   1 quot  set  quot value   2 quot   regedit  e  quot   reg quot   quot  key  quot    for  f  quot tokens 1   delims   quot    a in   find   quot  quot  quot  value  quot  quot   quot   quot   reg quot    do if  quot    b quot  neq  quot  quot  echo    b del  q   reg  endlocal  Example  call regreader bat  quot HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft NET Framework Setup NDP v3 0 Setup 1033  quot  Version  output   3 0 30729 4926

User · Answer

You can get the value of a registry key as follows   echo OFF setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS set REG NAME  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Test  set KEY NAME TestVal  FOR  F  usebackq skip 2 tokens 1-3    A IN   REG QUERY  REG NAME   v  KEY NAME  2  gt nul   DO        echo   A     C   pause   those who wonder how to add reg keys  here is a way   REGEDIT4     ECHO OFF   CLS   REGEDIT EXE  S    f0    EXIT   HKEY CURRENT USER Software Test   TestVal   Succeeded

User · Answer

I ve come across many errors on Windows XP computers when using WMIC  eg due to corrupted files on machines   Hence imo best not to use WMIC for Win XP in code  No problems with WMIC on Win 7 though

User · Answer

This one-liner is pretty much the same as your original try with a couple of additions   It works with paths including spaces  and works in both XP and Windows 7 even if the key is not found  and hides the error     fn  will be empty if the key does not exist   This example gets the current desktop background filename  for  f  quot tokens 2  quot    a in   reg query  quot HKEY CURRENT USER Control Panel Desktop quot   v Wallpaper 2  gt   amp 1  find  quot REG  quot    do  set fn   b  This command uses tokens 2  with   a as the loop variable but consumes   b to correctly handle spaces  When using tokens 2   the loop variable   a is assigned the value in the second token  in this case  REG SZ  and   b is assigned the remainder of the line after the next group of delimiter characters  including all internal delimiter characters  This means that   b will correctly replicate delimiter characters   even if multiple delimiter characters are clustered together  For example  the value might be C  A  weird path blah png  This technique of reading the value would correctly preserve the two spaces between C  A and weird

User · Answer

echo Off setlocal ENABLEEXTENSIONS  set KEY NAME  HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft NET Framework Setup  set VALUE NAME release   REG QUERY  KEY NAME   S  v  VALUE NAME  endlocal   dot put   at the end of KEY NAME

[batch-file] How can I get the value of a registry key from within a batch script?

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