ORDeleteKey function

Article
03/22/2021

Deletes a subkey and its values from an offline registry hive.

Syntax

DWORD ORDeleteKey(
  _In_     ORHKEY Handle,
  _In_opt_ PCWSTR lpSubKey
);

Parameters

Handle [in]

A handle to an open registry key in an offline registry hive. This handle is returned by the ORCreateKey or OROpenKey function.

lpSubKey [in, optional]

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

If the subkey does not exist, the function returns ERROR_NOT_FOUND.

If this parameter is NULL, the function deletes the key specified by the Handle parameter. If the key specified by the Handle parameter is the root key of the hive, the function returns ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER.

Key names are not case sensitive.

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. You can use the FormatMessage function with the FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM flag to get a generic description of the error. Possible error codes include the following:

If the specified subkey does not exist, the function returns ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.
If the specified subkey is the root key of the registry hive, the function returns ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER.
If the specified subkey has subkeys, the function returns ERROR_KEY_HAS_CHILDREN.

Remarks

If the specified registry key exists, it is marked as deleted. A deleted key is not removed until the last handle to it is closed.

The key to be deleted must not have subkeys. To delete a key and all its subkeys, use the OREnumKey function to enumerate the subkeys and delete them individually.

Only the ORCloseKey function may be called on a deleted key; all other offline registry operations fail. If the deleted key was explicitly created by calling ORCreateKey, resources associated with the key are released when the last handle to the deleted key is closed.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Redistributable	Windows Offline Registry library version 1.0 or later
Header	Offreg.h
DLL	Offreg.dll