Read a single registry key value on a remote machine

Question

I am having a very tough time achieving this one seemingly very simple goal...

I have to gather the value of a single registry key on several machines for the sake of auditing whether the machines scanned need to be patched with newer versions of software. I am only permitted to use python 3 as per our company policy (which is on drugs, but what can i do).

i have been looking into using the winreg module to connect to the remote machine (using credentials, we are on a domain) but I am confronted time and again with

TypeError: The object is not a PyHKEY object (or a number of other issues.)

this seems like a very common need and i've been surprised at the difficulty i have had finding any examples for python 3 that i can use to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Any assistance that anyone would be kind enough to give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Can you provide the code you are using? – Manish Sinha Oct 23 '09 at 07:34 — Manish Sinha, Oct 23 '09 at 07:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '09 at 07:33

1

Can you show the code which you are writing? Have you opened the key? Many people do get problems since they have not opened it? This is just a guess, hope it works

key = _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, r'SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root')

answered Oct 23 '09 at 07:33

Manish Sinha

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You have to open the key first, even if you want to delete it. The error message comes from calling a winreg method with an object that is not a valid (i.e. opened) key handle. – Michael Dillon Oct 25 '09 at 17:31

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 06 '19 at 19:28

The winreg module doesn't allow you to do what reg query does. So for example to read the BuildLabEx reg key value here's what I do:

import subprocess

keyPath = "\\\\RemoteMachineName\\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion"
output = subprocess.run(["reg", 
                 "query",
                 keyPath,
                 "/v",
                 "BuildLabEx"], 
               capture_output=True,
               text=True)
print(output.stdout)

The above snippet is equivalent to:

reg query "\\RemoteMachineName\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion" /v BuildLabEx

Read a single registry key value on a remote machine

2 Answers2