How To Retrieve the Registered User Under Windows (153309)

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

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

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

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