Running Regedit on remote system

Have you seen desktop authority ?
It's ideal solution for pushing registry changes on remote machines.
With validation logic of desktop authority this changes can be delivered only to certain users according to a ton of different criterias.

I appreciate all the input.  What I'm trying to achieve is updating all the W2K machines for the upcoming Daylight Savings Time change.  Therefore, I was needing to change a large amount of data, and had planned on trying to import it in.  I started with WMI, but it had its own issues doing remote manipulation.  From a brief look, I'm not sure if any of the other tools mentioned will allow importing a reg file.

Hi karl,

Yes, I forgot about Reg.exe; probably more suited to changing the odd key or value. I think Regini.exe and RegEdit.exe /s can be better when you need to change a lot of keys/values and I believe Regini.exe can also deal with permissions.

For machine registry hives (HKLM) on remote machines I tend to use WMI as this avoids needing an additional tool such as PsExec and you can perform other tasks at the same time.

For user registry hives (HKCU) there's also WshShell.RegRead() and RegWrite() which can be used within a Logon Script.

Hi, jtwatsn.

In addition to Gerry's explanation, let me try to add some details:

psexec \\remotepc -i -d regedit /s c:\regupdate.reg

psexec will use the local user in order to authenticate to the \\remotepc.
regedit.exe will look for the file C:\regupdate.reg on the machine \\remotepc.
If either of the two fails the command will not work. (local user does not exist on \\remotepc, file regupdate.reg ist not located on C:\ on \\remotepc)

Note:
The command you try to launch remotely is regedit.exe, not just "regedit". So it is always a good idea to write the ".exe" as well.

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psexec \\remotepc -i -d -c regedit /s c:\regupdate.reg

psexec will use the local user in order to authenticate to the \\remotepc. (see above)
psexec will try to copy a file named "regedit" to \\remotepc for execution. This is not what you want!
As explained above it is "regedit.exe", not just "regedit". But you do not wish to copy "regedit.exe" for executiion, but "regupdate.reg".

Limitation of pexec -c
The remote command to be executed remotely is "regedit.exe /s C:\regupdate.reg".
It consists of the executable name and 1 commandline argument.
Sadly enough the second part, regupdate.reg, needs to be transferred to \\remotepc before you can launch regedit.exe.
In such a case, the psexec option -c is of no use.

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I will not comment on the next two commandlines, because by using a UNC path in your command you just added an extra layer of problems to the situation without solving any of the existing problems before.

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The "messy" (Gerry's word) solution/workaround

From your local machine:

net use H: \\remotepc\C$ (replace H: by a drive letter not in use on your local machine) copy C:\regupdate.reg H:\ psexec \\remotepc -i regedit.exe /s c:\regupdate.reg Del H:\regupdate.reg net use H: /dele

Hope this helps.
Karl