Unable to return a WOW6432 version of a key from 32bit application

Question

I'm trying to read a registry key from my application. It is a 32-bit process and is running on a 64-bit system(Win7 64-bit). This is my code:

string value64 = string.Empty;
RegistryKey localKeyRegistryKey.OpenBaseKey(Microsoft.Win32.RegistryHive.LocalMachine, RegistryView.Registry64);    
localKey = localKey.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion");
if (localKey != null)
{
    value64 = localKey.GetValue("RegisteredOrganization").ToString();
    MessageBox.Show(value64, "value64");
}

On my system the value under this key(SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion) is empty, and the value under this(SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion) is "Microsoft". But the value64 in the message box is empty! Shouldn't it be "Microsoft"?

Answer 1

You are specifying RegistryView.Registry64 so it will be retrieving the value from SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

If you specify RegistryView.Registry32 it will retrieve it from SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion instead (that is, on a 64-bit system; on a 32-bit system the WOW6432Node doesn't exist so it will just use the normal hive instead).

I think that if you specify RegistryView.Default it will select the hive according to the bitness of the calling process.