Watch Windows registry entries, and if something change them, change them back.

I wrote this tool because some processes kept changing registry values on my windows computer, specifically my proxy.

I can't remove theses processes and need to live with them.

But bored of eternally set the same settings back, I wrote a tool that watch relevant keys in the registry, and if they change, change back to the value I want.

But it can be use to watch any entries you might want.

The tool is really easy to use, just start it and it will create an example config for you that you can re-use. I keep it's windows open because I like to see when it protect me from again, re-enter my proxy settings.

ThouShallNotMessWithMySettings.exe [settings_file]

Parameters:

• /h - Display help
• settings_file - The filename to read keys from. default value if not specified is settings.xml, if not exists will be created.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<keys>
    <key>
        <path>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings</path>
        <name>ProxyEnable</name>
        <type>REG_DWORD</type>
        <value>1</value>
    </key>
    <key>
        <path>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings</path>
        <name>ProxyServer</name>
        <type>REG_SZ</type>
        <value>myproxy.corporate.com:8080</value>
    </key>
    <key>
        <path>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Connections</path>
        <name>SavedLegacySettings</name>
        <type>REG_BINARY</type>
        <value>46 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 2F 00 00 00</value>
    </key>
</keys>

Only 3 kinds of registry type can be used but the tool is open sauce, feel free to add more if you need:

• REG_DWORD (uint32)
• REG_SZ (string)
• REG_BINARY (binary)

The binary data parser will ignore non hex characters, it will strip spaces, tabs, newline, etc… So feel free to indent your binary data! :)

Since it is about Windows registry I made it using .net. But I only had VS2005 installed when i made it so it is only .net 2.0 and no LINQ to XML candy for me.

Licence is Apache Software Licence, enjoy.

I borrowed some the code that is watching the registry from this RegistryMonitor article, licensed under CPOL. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/registrymonitor.aspx