Richard Siddaway's Blog

Set registry key owner

In chapter 7 of PowerShell and WMI I stated that I would post a .NET version of a script to set ownership of a registry key. The WMI method needs Vista or above so we need the .NET version for pre-Vista operating systems.

function set-regkeyowner {            
[CmdletBinding()]            
param (            
 [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]            
 [string]            
 [Validateset(“HKCR”, “HKCU”, “HKLM”, "HKUS", "HKCC")]            
  $hive,            
            
 [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]            
 [string]$key            
)              
PROCESS {             
Write-Verbose "Set Hive"            
switch ($hive){            
 “HKCR” {$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::ClassesRoot}            
 “HKCU” {$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::CurrentUser}            
 “HKLM” {$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::LocalMachine}            
 "HKUS" {$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::Users}            
 "HKCC" {$reg = [Microsoft.Win32.Registry]::CurrentConfig}            
}            
            
$permchk = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKeyPermissionCheck]::ReadWriteSubTree            
$regrights = [System.Security.AccessControl.RegistryRights]::ChangePermissions            
            
Write-Verbose "Open Key and get access control"            
$regkey = $reg.OpenSubKey($key, $permchk, $regrights)            
$rs = $regkey.GetAccessControl()            
            
Write-Verbose "Create security principal"            
$user = New-Object -TypeName Security.Principal.NTaccount -ArgumentList "Administrators"            
            
$rs.SetGroup($user)             
$rs.SetOwner($user)             
$regkey.SetAccessControl($rs)            
}            
}

Take a hive and key as parameters. Use a switch to set the Registry enumeration and then set the permissions and rights we want. Open the key and get the access controls.

Create a security principal for the Administrators group and set the group and owner in the access control. Use SetAccessControl to change the permissions