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Q237789: INFO: Windows 2000 Registry Entries Are Not Expanded

Article: Q237789
Product(s): Microsoft Windows NT
Version(s): WINDOWS:
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): kbOSWin2000 kbDSupport
Last Modified: 24-OCT-2000

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server 
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server 
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional 
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SUMMARY
=======

Before Windows 2000, most in-process applications were placed in the registry
with a complete, hard-coded path. In Windows 2000, many of the earlier,
absolute, hard-coded paths have been replaced with the appropriate %environment%
variable.

MORE INFORMATION
================

In-process applications are applications that are registered as handlers for a
particular file extension (for example, Filename.wri is started by Wordpad,
Filename.doc is started by Microsoft Word, and so on).

For instance, in the registry under HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current
version/App paths, the entry for Wordpad, which was C:\Program Files\Windows
NT\Accessories\Wordpad.exe, has become %Program Files%\Windows
NT\Accessories\Wordpad.exe.

When an application calls the RegQueryValueEx function to retrieve a string, it
should check to see whether lpType==REG_EXPAND_SZ, which means that the
application should call the ExpandEnvironmentStrings function, just in case the
string returned really does need to be expanded.

These registry values have been REG_EXPAND_SZ for quite some time, but
applications expected that these strings were already expanded for them. There
are several applications that try to call WinExec with the parameter (%Program
Files%\Windows NT\Accessories\Wordpad.exe, and so on) with incorrect results.

Additional query words:

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Keywords          : kbOSWin2000 kbDSupport 
Technology        : kbwin2000AdvServ kbwin2000AdvServSearch kbwin2000Serv kbwin2000ServSearch kbwin2000Search kbwin2000ProSearch kbwin2000Pro kbWinAdvServSearch
Version           : WINDOWS:
Issue type        : kbinfo

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