RegDeleteKeyA function (winreg.h)

Article
02/09/2023

Deletes a subkey and its values. Note that key names are not case sensitive.

64-bit Windows: On WOW64, 32-bit applications view a registry tree that is separate from the registry tree that 64-bit applications view. To enable an application to delete an entry in the alternate registry view, use the RegDeleteKeyEx function.

Syntax

LSTATUS RegDeleteKeyA(
  [in] HKEY   hKey,
  [in] LPCSTR lpSubKey
);

Parameters

[in] hKey

A handle to an open registry key. The access rights of this key do not affect the delete operation. For more information about access rights, see Registry Key Security and Access Rights.

This handle is returned by the RegCreateKeyEx or RegOpenKeyEx function, or it can be one of the following Predefined Keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG

HKEY_CURRENT_USER

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

HKEY_USERS

[in] lpSubKey

The name of the key to be deleted. It must be a subkey of the key that hKey identifies, but it cannot have subkeys. This parameter cannot be NULL.

The function opens the subkey with the DELETE access right.

Key names are not case sensitive.

For more information, see Registry Element Size Limits.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is ERROR_SUCCESS.

If the function fails, the return value is a nonzero error code defined in Winerror.h. To get a generic description of the error, you can use the FormatMessage function with the FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM flag.

Remarks

A deleted key is not removed until the last handle to it is closed.

The subkey to be deleted must not have subkeys. To delete a key and all its subkeys, you need to enumerate the subkeys and delete them individually. To delete keys recursively, use the RegDeleteTree or SHDeleteKey function.

Examples

For an example that uses this function, see Deleting a Key with Subkeys.

Note

On legacy versions of Windows, this API is also exposed by kernel32.dll.

Note

The winreg.h header defines RegDeleteKey as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winreg.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Advapi32.lib
DLL	Advapi32.dll

Share via