Adding Registry Settings

From WPKG | Open Source Software Deployment and Distribution

You can use regedit to silently import registry settings. This can be useful to setup defaults for applications, or apply registry tweaks for various Windows settings.

<package
     id="sample_registry"
     name="Shows a registry entry"
     revision="1"
     priority="0"
     execute="once">
   <check type="registry" condition="equals" path="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Test" value="1" />
   <install cmd='regedit /s "%SOFTWARE%\test_registry.reg"' />
 </package>

And the sample file:

test_registry.reg:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Test]
"Test Setting"=dword:00000001
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\TEST2]

(In Win2k/XP adding "-" in front of a key name causes that key to be deleted from the registry.)

Normally, you would export this from regedit.exe.

Alternatively, in most modern versions of Windows, there is also a command line registry editor, reg.exe. This can add/delete/modify registry keys without the need for a .reg file. The matching install command to the above example would be:

REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Test /v "Test Setting" /d "1" /t REG_DWORD