REG <-> HIVE file conversion question

[TASMUser]

I want to convert binary "hive" files to text based "reg" files created by REGEDIT.EXE or REG.EXE or any other program.

1) Is there any ready-to-use program available for this purpose?
2) If not 1), are there any WinAPI functions which can be used to convert these file types straightly without the need to import/export the "hive"/"reg" file into/from the registry?

I couldn't find any information at the M$ site which fit my needs.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[ecube]

there's some source out there, but what you're asking about "raw registry hives" is heavily undocumented and definitely not easy to do. Because the thing is in later versions of windows user access rights etc apply to the registry, using the hives directly would bypass that, so microsoft has no reason to document any of that.

[KeepingRealBusy]

TASMUser ,

In 2002 at B Dalton's bookstore, when I was buying my MASM book (Kip's book), I also saw on display a very large book (larger and thicker than Kip's book) on the Registry by Microsoft Press. That was 8 years ago and I do not remember the name of the book, I was really interested in learning MASM. Since All Microsoft books are registered with ISBN, maybe the title can be obtained, then search the Web for a copy.

Dave.

[Vortex]

Hi TASMUser,

Did you check the RegLoadKey and RegSaveKey functions?

EDIT : SaveRegToFile - Save a registry subkey to a .reg file

[Twister]

What this guy is wanting to do (from what I can understanding) is dumping the Registry Hives to readable text. shows directories and all.

[donkey]

The HIVEX library is a fairly easy to use library that can be used to directly access the registry hive. Haven't looked at it for a while so I'm not sure about registry security issues but its worth a try.

http://libguestfs.org/hivex.3.html

[TASMUser]

What this guy is wanting to do (from what I can understanding) is dumping the Registry Hives to readable text. shows directories and all.

Exactly. I've got a .hiv file and want to convert it to a .reg file.

@donkey:
Thank you for the hint to the "hivex" library. Unfortunatly I can't compile it because it seems to be specialized for using only in linux with their special compiler. Also some header files are missing and many compiler switches within the .h files are undocumented. Very annoying.

[Vortex]

Hi TASMUser,

Do you have the chance to convert the Linux object modules to MS COFF modules?  Linux uses the ELF object file format.

Here is the tool Object file converter by Agner Fog :

http://agner.org/optimize/#objconv