Microsoft KB Archive/153309

Knowledge Base

How To Retrieve the Registered User Under Windows

Article ID: 153309

Article Last Modified on 7/15/2004

---

APPLIES TO

• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Enterprise Edition

---

This article was previously published under Q153309

SUMMARY

The strings related to the registered user of a particular copy of Windows are stored in a string inside USER.EXE. They are displayed in the Help About box of File Manager, or Explorer in Windows 95 and Windows 98. This article provides a code sample showing how to extract this information.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
2. Place a command button on the form.

3. Add the following code to the form1 code window:

      Option Explicit
   
      Private Declare Function GetModuleHandle Lib "Kernel" _
         (ByVal Module As String) As Integer
      Private Declare Function LoadString Lib "user" _
         (ByVal hInst As Integer, ByVal wID As Integer, _
         ByVal buf As Any, ByVal size As Integer) As Integer
   
      Sub Command1_Click()
       Dim ihInst As Integer
       Dim sUserName As String * 128
       Dim sOrganization As String * 128
       Dim sTitle As String
       Dim iLength As Integer
       ihInst = GetModuleHandle("user.exe")
       iLength = LoadString(ihInst, 514, sUserName, Len(sUserName))
       sUserName = Left$(sUserName, iLength)
       iLength = LoadString(ihInst, 515, sOrganization, Len(sOrganization))
       sOrganization = Left$(sOrganization, iLength)
       Print sUserName
       Print sOrganization
      End Sub
                       

4. Press F5 to run the project. Click the command button. The information should be printed on the form.

REFERENCES

The API can also be used if you use Visual Basic 4.0 32-bit by changing the RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner values in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

as explained in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

145679 : How To Use the Registry API to Save and Retrieve Setting

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

88363 : Changing Name and Company After Windows Installation

Keywords: kbhowto kbregistry kbapi kb16bitonly KB153309

---

Send feedback to Microsoft

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.