Remote registry always null when different user

Question

I am creating a c# windows form application that goes read registry on remote computers.

RegistryKey regKey = RegistryKey
                        .OpenRemoteBaseKey(RegistryHive.CurrentUser, pc, RegistryView.Registry64)
                        .OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\ODBC\\ODBC.INI\\ODBC Data Sources");

When i run the application from USER1 it works because my remote computers are always logged in with USER1.

Now if i run it with USER2 my regKey is always equal to NULL, no matter what.

On my remote computers, in Component Services, i allowed the service : REMOTE REGISTRY.

Any ideas please ?

What the difference between the permissions of User1 and User2? — abatishchev, Jun 18 '12 at 15:38
Has user2 ever logged onto the machines? If not then it wont have any registry entries to check as you are searching CurrentUser. — Gaz Winter, Jun 18 '12 at 15:43
@abatishchev i cannot access to the domain to see what are the difference between the two users — pharaon450, Jun 18 '12 at 16:07
@GazWinter i have 4 remote computers, USER2 only logged in onto 1 of them, i should at least see one of remote registry, but no my regKey is still NULL — pharaon450, Jun 18 '12 at 16:08
try this to check permissions diff b/w User1 & User2 - `Accesschk "domain\user" -a *`. Download it from here - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb664922 — Angshuman Agarwal, Jun 18 '12 at 16:18
Frankly I'm surprised this even works as RegConnectRegistry() (invoked internally by OpenRemoteBaseKey) is not documented as supporting HKEY_CURRENT_USER. I guess it must impersonate you on the server side and it just happens to work if your registry is already loaded at the time. As a workaround you could try opening HKEY_USERS hive and "\\SOFTWARE\\ODBC\\..." key instead where is the account SID; I don't know how robust that is, though. — Luke, Jun 18 '12 at 17:32

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 18 '12 at 20:26

You cannot read HKEY_CURRENT_USER via remote registry, for the simple reason that there is no "current user" from the perspective of the remote registry service.

For example, would it be:

The registry key you would see if you were logged on? (but you are not!)
The registry key of the current logged-on user (What if there is none? What if more than one?)

It cannot just fetch your registry hive and load it because you may not have a roaming profile. It doesn't want to create one just so you can look at the registry.

So: HKEY_CURRENT_USER doesn't return anything for remote registry service. If you are interested in a particular user you might look under HKEY_USERS.

Remote registry always null when different user

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