Interesting annoyance

[ardemus]

When I run Regedit as a standard user, I find Mozilla keys, but I can't delete them. When I run Regedit as an admin, I don't find any Mozilla keys.

Comments

HKEY_CURRENT_USER?

[tkil]

If the keys you are looking for are under the current user key, it might have switched that out if you're running as admin. Don't know offhand where the non-current user stuff is kept, tho. Good luck...

Re: HKEY_CURRENT_USER?

[maniakes]

That's very likely what's going on. When you run something as admin, it's running under a different account.

Look under HKEY_USERS. The user accounts are arranged by GUID, not name, but there shouldn't be too many to hunt through.

Re: HKEY_CURRENT_USER?

[ardemus]

That's what I thought too, and it seemed ridiculous. You have to log in as a the user to see the fields, but as an admin to work with them? :P

Turns out that regedit only searches from the currently selected key to the end of the registry, it start from the top or wrap around. Plus, it tells you that it searched the whole registry when it finishes. It also selects the last key you had edited when you open it (and defaults to only exporting the selected key, to boot).

I just had to go to the top of the registry each time I searched. Then I found the keys I was looking for.