You can use the Registry editor in Microsoft® Visual Studio® Installer to modify the target machine registry as necessary for your application installation. After your installation package (.msi) file installs your components and files on the target machine, it can write the associated registry keys and values to the system registry. You establish the keys and values your .msi file writes to the system registry by setting them up in the Registry editor.
This topic explains how to:
For information about adding or deleting registry keys, see Adding and Deleting Registry Keys. For information about setting registry values, see Setting Registry Values.
Note The best place to create and maintain registry values specific to your installed application is in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\YOUR COMPANY NAME\YOUR APPLICATION NAME registry key. This helps prevent clashes between your registry values and other values.
The Registry editor is displayed.
Note You can expand the HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE nodes in the Registry editor and any other subtrees, keys, or subkeys with child keys or subkeys.
Type of registry value (as listed in the submenu) | Definition | Sample data |
String value | A fixed-length or variable-length text string | A program name |
Binary value | Binary data | Hardware component data |
DWORD value | Integer data represented by a number that is four bytes long | Parameters for device drivers and services |
A new registry value is added to the selected registry key and shown in the Name column in the right pane of the Registry editor, with the default name New Value. You can change the default New Value name, if desired.
After adding a registry value, you must set it. For more information, see Setting Registry Values.
With its parent registry key or subkey selected, the registry value you want to rename is shown in the Name column in the right pane of the Registry editor.
With its parent registry key or subkey selected, the registry value you want to delete is shown in the Name column in the right pane of the Registry editor.
The selected registry value is deleted from your installer project and is no longer shown in the Registry editor. The information will not be written to the target machine registry when your application is installed.