DOCUMENT:Q186897  16-JUN-1998  [vbwin]
TITLE   :PRB: "Failure Writing to the System Registry" Error Message
PRODUCT :Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows
PROD/VER:WINDOWS:5.0
OPER/SYS:WINDOWS
KEYWORDS:

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The information in this article applies to:

 - Microsoft Visual Basic Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions,
   32-bit only, for Windows, version 5.0
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SYMPTOMS
========

When you run a setup program that was created using the Application Setup
Wizard, you receive the following error message:

   Failure writing to the system registry. The registry may be corrupt, or
   you may not have the required permissions to write to the registry.

CAUSE
=====

As the error message indicates, the problem may be due to a corrupt
registry or incorrect permissions to write to the registry. In addition,
the problem occurs on computers running Windows 95 when the Setup program
tries to add an entry to a registry key and the key will exceed 64K in size
as a result. Registry keys are limited to 64K in Windows 95.

RESOLUTION
==========

When the problem occurs on a Windows 95 computer, it usually happens when
Setup tries to add entries to the following registry key:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDLLs

To determine whether the SharedDLLs key is approaching the 64K limit,
follow these steps to export the key to the Desktop and look at the size of
the exported file:

1. Click the Start button, and then click Run.

2. In the Open box, type "regedit" (without the quotation marks), and then
   click OK.

3. On the Edit menu, click Find. In the Find What box, type "SharedDLLs"
   (without the quotation marks). Under Look At, select only the Keys check
   box, and then click Find Next.

4. On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File. In the Save In list,
   click Desktop. In the File Name box, type "MySharedDLLs" (without the
   quotation marks), and then click Save.

   This saves a copy of the SharedDLLs registry key to a file called
   MySharedDLLs.reg on the Desktop.

5. On the Desktop, right-click MySharedDLLs.reg, and then click
   Properties on the shortcut menu. Note the size of the file. If it is
   approximately 64K in size, the "Failure writing to the system
   registry" error message is being caused by a limitation of Windows 95.

   To work around the 64K limit, open the MySharedDLLs.reg file you created
   in step 4 in Notepad or Wordpad. Notice which programs have entries in
   the SharedDLLs key. If you notice file names from programs that you are
   no longer using, you may want to remove (uninstall) these programs to
   free up space in the registry key. If you have entries for files that
   no longer exist on the hard drive, you can remove the entries directly.

If you determine that the error message is not being caused by the 64K
registry key limit, try the following:

 - In NT, try running Setup while logged on the computer as a member of the
   Administrators group to determine whether there is a problem with
   permissions.

 - Run the RegClean utility.

   RegClean is designed to clean up unnecessary entries in the
   HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT branch of the registry. For more information about
   RegClean, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge
   Base:

         ARTICLE-ID: Q147769
         TITLE     : INFO: RegClean 4.1a Description and General Issues

 - Restore the registry file from a backup. For additional information,
   please see the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic in Regedit.exe or the
   "Restoring a Registry  Key" Help topic in Regedt32.exe.

Additional query words: capacity limitation kbDSSTools kbdss kbSetUp
kbVBp500 kbDSupport
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Version           : WINDOWS:5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbprb

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