regedit key search

Topic

New Reply

In regedit, I’m trying to find keys for “SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\edgeupdate”.  I *know* there are keys that’d match that [because I have the .reg file that put one there], but when I give regedit that search string it tells me that there’s no hits.  Is there some proper/different syntax that can find keys like that?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Why don’t you manually drill down (4 clicks) to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate

Reply | Quote

Of course.  I’d gotten so burned trying to search for “edgeupdate” my [incorrect] thought was to do a more specific search.   In fact, it was four clicks and a right-click>delete and I was able to make the key go away.  thanks!

Reply | Quote

“SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\edgeupdate” is an invalid regedit search because registry keys do not include the \ character! To find something that’s a subkey inside other keys, you have to search for that specific key.

In your case searching for “edgeupdate” as a key will find what you’re looking for.

Reply | Quote

I tried that and after I waded through about a hundred “hits” I tried searching for the whole key

Reply | Quote

berniec wrote:

I tried that and after I waded through about a hundred “hits” I tried searching for the whole key

Umm… but it’s not a whole key, it’s a partial regpath without the parent ‘hive designate’. You can’t search for a partial regpath in the built-in registry editor.

If you need to search within the Windows registry then try using NirSoft’s small, free, portable RegScanner.

IMO it’s *so* much easier (and much, much quicker) than torturing yourself with RegEdit.

Alternatively, try O&O RegEditor… its search is better than RegEdit.

(To be honest, most alternatives are better than RegEdit. IMO it’s a very poor front-end to a distributed database.)

Hope this helps…

3 users thanked author for this post.

SueW, satrow, geekdom

Reply | Quote