Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 14

Thread: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Mendocino, CA
    Beans
    213

    Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    I'm trying to fix a system that was corrupted by a virus. I'd like to know how to edit the registry using a Live CD with Wine installed, if that's even possible.
    There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of its kernels.
    Join the FSF as an Associate Member!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Beans
    543

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    I don't think anyone's ever tried this before. Importing the Windows registry into Wine won't work, and neither will setting Wine to use your windows drive as it's C:\ drive (this will in fact break the Windows installation completely)

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Beans
    27
    Distro
    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    Quote Originally Posted by kahlil88 View Post
    I'm trying to fix a system that was corrupted by a virus. I'd like to know how to edit the registry using a Live CD with Wine installed, if that's even possible.
    This linux boot cd looks like what you want:

    http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Nunyabidness
    Beans
    68
    Distro
    Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    There actually is a registry editor in wine. I found it before. I'll tell you how to get there in a second.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Nunyabidness
    Beans
    68
    Distro
    Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    Ok browse the C: drive and go into the windows folder. Then click regedit.exe . Hope that was helpful. I'm not sure about putting wine on a live CD though. You can try though.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Beans
    27
    Distro
    Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    Quote Originally Posted by prematurebaby View Post
    Ok browse the C: drive and go into the windows folder. Then click regedit.exe . Hope that was helpful. I'm not sure about putting wine on a live CD though. You can try though.
    I don't think wine's regedit is compatible with regular windows.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Beans
    279

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    I find it surprising that such a tool has not yet emerged .. Imagine how easier it would be to clean a malware infected system from a separate incompatible (to the malware) environment, such as a linux live cd or installation.
    Wine can't use its own registry editor to tweak a normal windows registry but what about some other tool?
    Or are there technical difficulties in the way?
    I want to live in this alternate universe T___T

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Beans
    6

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    I'm looking all over for a tool to do this as well, viewing and exporting a current windows installation's registry is good enough for me (I'm sure this is in some way possible, while modifying a registry could lead to corrupting it, a read-only style of working with it would be wonderful in so many ways)

    I am wondering why there isn't something out that can do this by now (that I can find). I'm, of course, not the biggest wiz, and am having trouble finding a way to do this alone

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Beans
    6

    Re: Can I edit my Windows registry with Wine?

    Alright, after a little bit of work I found an easy way to do this...(I hafta say I don't feel to brilliant that I didn't think of it sooner) I am personally not going to modify my registry, but I do believe it's possible.

    I simply downloaded an old program i used.. to repair registries from a dual booting windows machine.

    http://www.soft411.com/company/MiTeC...ile-Viewer.htm

    and ran it with wine

    from there you can open standalone windows registry hives in the windows\system32\config directory


    I hope this may help someone else out there.
    Last edited by flav0rl3ss; November 20th, 2008 at 06:40 AM.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Beans
    18

    Post CHNTPW + MiTeC + WINE 1.3.17 + Linux ~ Might Be the Best We Can Have for Now.

    Hey guys. I know this an old thread, but do you know what else is old? Not having a GUI by which to edit the Windows registry from Linux. I'm not blaming Linux or anything for being inadequate (no one can rightfully demand that Linux be equipped with such a tool), and I'm very thankful for what they have given the public, but I think many of you will agree with me that there is a need here.

    If you don't want to read all this, and just want the workaround, skip to the end.

    Why is this a need? Well, it sure would help if I had a CD or thumb drive that I could just boot any computer with, and proceed to edit the Windows registry of the computer I booted off of, for recovery purposes. And, of course, we all want to be able to this for free - legally free. How many operating systems do you know of that are capable of booting off a thumb drive (or something else portable and insertable without opening the case), capable of being portable from system to system regardless of hardware, is free, has a GUI, and is able to run programs that can be used for recovery purposes? Of these that you could think of, which one would you prefer to work in? Probably Linux. If not, it probably is Linux, and you don't realize it. Having a registry editor that we can point at any collection of hive files and also works in Linux is the obvious solution here - but we want a GUI - or at least I do.

    Flav0rl3ss, I'm sorry to say that the MiTeC Registry Viewer only VIEWS registry hives, and does not do editing. I got really excited when it worked flawlessly in WINE 1.3.17, but it was heartbreaking to find that it only views. I found out the hard way.

    There seems to be 5 requirements here:
    #1. Be able to load a hive of one's choosing, not just the hive it finds first.
    #2. Be Free. (If we didn't care about free, then this thread would be closer to pointless - or should I say needless - hehehe - because you could just boot into Windows and edit the registry. Yes you can install XP to a USB drive, and yes there is a portability "hack" you can do in the registry to make it not care about differing hardware, see www.ngine.de.)
    #3. Work in WINE, or goodness forbid, natively in Linux.
    #4. Have a GUI.
    #5. Be able to read AND write to the registry.

    I've known about the chntpw registry editor for, I think over 2 years now, but just today discovered that there is a version that can be installed into Linux, in fact, it's in the Ubuntu default repository, so you can "sudo apt-get" it. This is a CLI tool. It has no GUI. Before, I thought it was only available as it's own independent operating system that you booted off a CD or thumb drive. This bugged me in my attempts to make a multi-bootable thumb drive that included it as a tool because the darn thing (ok, I actually love it) has not one, but TWO initial ramdisks, and GRUB2 does not support the loading of more than one initial ram disk to a kernel, the loopback-iso-GRUB2 method didn't work, and also, I succeeded in merging the two images into one (I think), but GRUB2 still didn't boot it, and sadly, I had issues with syslinux and GRUB2 co-existing, though I think I could do it now. But now I can just have a thumb drive bootable into Linux, and have it in there!

    Another issue with the "independent" (its own OS) form was that it had the worst possible interface (ok, not worst possible, but pretty bad). I can put up with a CLI when I'm desperate, but this was heck. Let's say you want to edit something in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run . First you had to tell it to go into registry editor mode, then load the hive, which is all well and good, but you couldn't just do "edit [path] to [whatever you wanted the value to be]". You first had to cd to Software. Then cd to Microsoft. Then cd to Windows. Then cd to CurrentVersion. Then cd to Run. Yep, it was bad. What if you wanted to delete a key? Oh boy. You had to delete everything in that key before you could delete it. If the key contained keys that contained keys... I think you can see where this is going.

    The "dependent" one, if you will, doesn't seem to have such cding issues. However, still no GUI. It also has an "rdel" feature that recursively deletes keys, meaning you don't have to do the super annoying delete ls delete ls delete ls like before. That feature wasn't there last time I used chntpw (which was in the "independent" version). I have a feeling that there simply have been newer versions since last time I tried it, and the new version is probably implemented in the "independent" version by now too, so it too probably now has rdel and deep cding. But it still doesn't reload your last line with an up arrow key. I misspell paths ior get quotes ior slashes wrong a lot, and I want to be able to go back and tweak it instead of writing out that big, long path again. Am I picky or what?

    Editing the Windows registry from Linux is actually something I have researched before. Unfortunately, when I right-click on the Windows regedit and tell it to run in Wine, it seems to bring up the same regedit that typing "wine regedit" at terminal brings up. Either way, I have no option of loading a hive. I certainly don't have a file menu when I click on HKEY_USERS or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE keys (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...03(WS.10).aspx). I can import or export a text file containing keys, but not a hive. It just loads the WINE registry, and that's your option. You can have a Model-T in any color you want as long as that color is black.

    I found PC Regedit quite a while ago (at least a year), but it straight-up wouldn't boot. http://www.pcregedit.com/ . If I remember right, it didn't want to boot off a thumb drive no matter what sorcery I threw at it either. Of course, I tried burning the iso to a CD too (though I avoid CDs whenever possible and use a thumb drive). It is free, and supposedly has a GUI and lets you pick the hive files and is bootable as its own thing and everything...but it wouldn't boot. That puts quite the damper on it.

    The bootable AVG tool supposedly has a registry editor as well, but I couldn't get it to work. It just didn't go. Like, nothing. It booted into it's thing, but the option to edit the registry was a no-go.

    So I spent a couple hours trying to find a 3rd party registry tool that would work through WINE. Here's the ones I found and tried in one determined sitting (maybe the last one or two was a second setting, but here we go):

    Regalyzer: It ran, and it has the option to load the hive of choice, but errored when I told it to load a hive. I saw that the volume containing the hive files was mounted with root being the owner, so I edited fstab to mount the volume with me owning it (the person running WINE), and it still errored. I copied the config folder to my home folder and it still errored.

    Reg: Ran, but no option to load hive of choice. It only opened the WINE registry.

    RegistrarLite: Editing hives from a location of choice seems only to be offered in the Pro version (costs money).

    Vilma Reg Explore: Straight-up didn't open.

    Registry Commander: No option to load hive of choice, only loaded WINE registry.

    CrackSoft Reg Explore: Straight-up didn't open.

    RegmagiK: Staight-up didn't open.

    Salamander Whatever It's Called: Looks free, but's not.

    Small Registry Editor: Straight-up didn't open.

    RegSeeker: Not actually an editor. It's just searcher/ cleaner.

    Ntpwedit.exe: This seemed most promising because I read that it is a GUI implementation of chntpw. Sadly it only implements the OTHER feature of chntpw, not it's registry editing feature.

    MiTeC Registry Viewer: OMIGOSH!! OMIGOSH!! It actually loaded in Wine AND has an option to load whatever hive I want to AND it's free AND it ACTUALLY succeeded in loading the hive of choice!! OMIGOSH!...oh. It only views. It doesn't edit. Poop.

    Yes, it's OK to laugh. In fact, I would appreciate it if someone did. It's an excellent way of coping; I've found.

    My recommendation: Use MiTeC Registry Viewer in WINE 1.3.17 (or higher, provided it still works) side-by-side with the "dependent" chntpw (obtained by "sudo apt-get install chntpw" in terminal, or through Synaptic package manager. Terminal is actually quicker and easier, believe it or not). Copy the config folder somewhere, have MiTeC Registry Viewer pointed at the copy, and have chntpw open in terminal pointed at the original. You can search and find the paths/ names of wanted (as in bounty-on-head, not as in "desired") registry keys in MiTeC, then do the dirty work in chntpw. You can copy and paste even. Shift-Ctrl-V to paste into terminal, and Shift-Ctrl-C to copy selection from terminal. Don't forget Ctrl-Alt-T to open terminal . Pasting what you have copied from terminal into something other than a terminal is Ctrl-V as normal (without the Shift). So you can copy the key name/path from MiTeC into terminal where you are in chntpw. WINE 1.3.17 lets your WINE clipboard be one with your Linux clipboard; it didn't used to be that way. You had to paste in WINE notepad, save, open in gedit and copy - or something absurd like that.

    FAT NOTE IN ALL-CAPS. CHNTPW IS CAPS-SENSITIVE, AS IS TERMINAL.

    Post-Post (hehehe, see technically it's not post-script because there's no signature, and it conveniently makes a pseudo-pun. No, not a sudo-pun.): Maybe use Kregedit instead of MiTeC in WINE because Kregedit runs natively in Linux and you could skip WINE. Then again, maybe MiTeC is so much better that it's worth it, I don't know. You still can't write with either.
    Last edited by SpawnHappyJake; April 18th, 2011 at 01:13 AM. Reason: Added post-post

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •