To add a .reg file silently to your Windows registry, you can use the regedit
command. As almost always, the /s
parameter is for silent and /q
for quiet.
regedit /s your-key.reg
In this post, you learned how to silently import a .reg file into your Windows Registry. This neat regedit.exe
trick comes in handy quite often. The regedit.exe command is valid for Windows 11, 10, Windows Server 2022, 2019 and older.
Create registry keys and values silently with Powershell
A PowerShell method of creating registry keys and setting values is using the cmdlets New-Item and New-ItemProperty. Normally they are all but silent and output a lot of information, but you can pipe the output to NULL using Out-Null. This hides the output instead of sending it down the pipeline or displaying it.
See the following examples and their differences:
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink> New-Item -Path HKCU:\Software -Name TestSoftware
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
Name Property
---- --------
TestSoftware
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink> New-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\TestSoftware -Name key -Value 0001 -Type DWORD
key : 1
PSPath : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TestSoftware
PSParentPath : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
PSChildName : TestSoftware
PSDrive : HKCU
PSProvider : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink>
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink> New-Item -Path HKCU:\Software -Name TestSoftware | Out-Null
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink> New-ItemProperty -Path HKCU:\Software\TestSoftware -Name key -Value 0001 -Type DWORD | Out-Null
PS C:\Users\Jan Reilink>
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)
If needed, you can also call reg.exe
from Powershell to import a .reg registry file silently:
# Assuming you're in the directory where the .reg file is located, otherwise change the path
Start-Process -NoNewWindow -FilePath "C:\Windows\regedit.exe" -ArgumentList "/s .\your-key.reg"
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)
If you have spaces in your ArgumentList arguments, don’t forget to place quotes around them and escape those quotes using a backtick `
, see:
Start-Process -NoNewWindow -FilePath "C:\Windows\regedit.exe" -ArgumentList "/s `"C:\Users\Jan Reilink\dev\TestSoftware.reg`""
Code language: PHP (php)
See Stack Overflow for an example.
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It used to be silent but suddenly, as of the last couple of weeks (SEPT2020) its now triggering UAC on Windows 10.
For Windows 8+ you can use REG IMPORT instead
So, previously, and for many years:
regedit /s “registry-to-import.reg”
now
reg import “registry-to-import.reg”
It’s not entirely silent, as it asks for administrator approval. I want to use this in a login script for computers that are not joined to the domain.