ATL server registration may fail if you logged on by using an account that does not have appropriate registry user rights (190686)

SYMPTOMS

Registration or unregistration of ATL servers may fail on a machine if the logged-on user doesn't have appropriate registry user rights. In-process servers may fail and display the following message:

DllRegisterServer in projectname.dll failed. Return code was:
0x80020009.

Debug EXE servers, linked statically to the registrar code and run in the debugger, may display the following trace messages:

Failed to register, cleaning up!
The thread 0xnn has exited with code -2147352567 (0x80020009).

CAUSE

CRegKey is a class used by ATL for manipulating the registry. It's Open() and Create() methods have a REGSAM argument that specifies the security access to the particular registry key.

The REGSAM argument defaults to KEY_ALL_ACCESS. In several places in the ATL code, Open() and Create() are called without specifying the REGSAM, which means it defaults to KEY_ALL_ACCESS. KEY_ALL_ACCESS is a combination of other flags including WRITE_DAC and WRITE_OWNER.

For a nonadministrator, you may not have WRITE_DAC and WRITE_OWNER permissions, which causes registration to fail.

RESOLUTION

In ATLBASE.H, change the default REGSAM for CRegKey::Create() and CRegKey::Open() to KEY_READ|KEY_WRITE:

   class CRegKey
   {
      ...
      LONG Create(HKEY hKeyParent, LPCTSTR lpszKeyName, LPTSTR lpszClass =
         REG_NONE, DWORD dwOptions = REG_OPTION_NON_VOLATILE,
         REGSAM samDesired = KEY_READ | KEY_WRITE, // changed REGSAM
         LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpSecAttr = NULL,
         LPDWORD lpdwDisposition = NULL);
      LONG Open(HKEY hKeyParent, LPCTSTR lpszKeyName,
         REGSAM samDesired = KEY_READ | KEY_WRITE);  // changed REGSAM
      ...
   };

You need to link statically to the registrar. Building for ReleaseMinDependency will statically link to the registrar. Debug builds link dynamically to the registrar via Atl.dll. You need to add _ATL_STATIC_REGISTRY to the list of Preprocessor definitions. You can do this on the Project menu by clicking Settings. Click the C/C++ tab and select General under Category.

For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

166717 Instructions for statically linking to registrar code

REFERENCES

For more information about ATL registration, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

166217 PRB: ATL EXE server built on Windows 95 errors while registering

167927 PRB: Building ATL service project does not register the service

179688 FIX: ATL servers do not unregister their type library

185677 FIX: ATL service with space in name is not registered correctly