win_regedit - Add, change, or remove registry keys and values

New in version 2.0.

Synopsis

• Add, modify or remove registry keys and values.
• More information about the windows registry from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Registry.

Parameters

Parameter	Choices/Defaults	Comments
data		Value of the registry entry name in path. If not specified then the value for the property will be null for the corresponding type. Binary and None data should be expressed in a yaml byte array or as comma separated hex values. An easy way to generate this is to run regedit.exe and use the export option to save the registry values to a file. In the exported file, binary value will look like hex:be,ef,be,ef, the hex: prefix is optional. DWORD and QWORD values should either be represented as a decimal number or a hex value. Multistring values should be passed in as a list. See the examples for more details on how to format this data.
delete_key bool (added in 2.4)	Choices: no yes ←	When state is 'absent' then this will delete the entire key. If no then it will only clear out the '(Default)' property for that key.
hive path (added in 2.5)		A path to a hive key like C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT to load in the registry. This hive is loaded under the HKLM:\ANSIBLE key which can then be used in name like any other path. This can be used to load the default user profile registry hive or any other hive saved as a file. Using this function requires the user to have the SeRestorePrivilege and SeBackupPrivilege privileges enabled.
name		Name of the registry entry in the above path parameters. If not provided, or empty then the '(Default)' property for the key will be used. aliases: entry
path required		Name of the registry path. Should be in one of the following registry hives: HKCC, HKCR, HKCU, HKLM, HKU. aliases: key
state	Choices: absent present ←	The state of the registry entry.
type	Choices: binary dword expandstring multistring string ← qword	The registry value data type. aliases: datatype

Notes

Note

• Check-mode -C/--check and diff output -D/--diff are supported, so that you can test every change against the active configuration before applying changes.
• Beware that some registry hives (HKEY_USERS in particular) do not allow to create new registry paths in the root folder.
• Since ansible 2.4, when checking if a string registry value has changed, a case-sensitive test is used. Previously the test was case-insensitive.

Examples

- name: Create registry path MyCompany
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with entry 'hello', and containing 'world'
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: world

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with dword entry 'hello', and containing 1337 as the decimal value
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: 1337
    type: dword

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with dword entry 'hello', and containing 0xff2500ae as the hex value
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: 0xff2500ae
    type: dword

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with binary entry 'hello', and containing binary data in hex-string format
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: hex:be,ef,be,ef,be,ef,be,ef,be,ef
    type: binary

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with binary entry 'hello', and containing binary data in yaml format
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: [0xbe,0xef,0xbe,0xef,0xbe,0xef,0xbe,0xef,0xbe,0xef]
    type: binary

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with expand string entry 'hello'
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: '%appdata%\local'
    type: expandstring

- name: Add or update registry path MyCompany, with multi string entry 'hello'
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    data: ['hello', 'world']
    type: multistring

- name: Disable keyboard layout hotkey for all users (changes existing)
  win_regedit:
    path: HKU:\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Toggle
    name: Layout Hotkey
    data: 3
    type: dword

- name: Disable language hotkey for current users (adds new)
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Keyboard Layout\Toggle
    name: Language Hotkey
    data: 3
    type: dword

- name: Remove registry path MyCompany (including all entries it contains)
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    state: absent
    delete_key: yes

- name: Clear the existing (Default) entry at path MyCompany
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    state: absent
    delete_key: no

- name: Remove entry 'hello' from registry path MyCompany
  win_regedit:
    path: HKCU:\Software\MyCompany
    name: hello
    state: absent

- name: Change default mouse trailing settings for new users
  win_regedit:
    path: HKLM:\ANSIBLE\Control Panel\Mouse
    name: MouseTrails
    data: 10
    type: string
    state: present
    hive: C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.dat

Return Values

Common return values are documented here, the following are the fields unique to this module:

Key	Returned	Description
data_changed boolean	success	whether this invocation changed the data in the registry value
data_type_changed boolean	success	whether this invocation changed the datatype of the registry value Sample: True

Status

This module is flagged as preview which means that it is not guaranteed to have a backwards compatible interface.

Maintenance

This module is flagged as core which means that it is maintained by the Ansible Core Team. See Module Maintenance & Support for more info.

For a list of other modules that are also maintained by the Ansible Core Team, see here.

Support

For more information about Red Hat’s support of this module, please refer to this Knowledge Base article

Author

• Adam Keech (@smadam813)
• Josh Ludwig (@joshludwig)
• Jordan Borean (@jborean93)

Hint

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