Registry in MSIX container- the quick way to inspect a registry hive

Written by Alex Marin · January 16th, 2020

When it comes to registry inside the MSIX container, we all know that by default there is no direct access from the machine.

Unlike APP-V, MSIX does not import the registry from registry.dat file during the first run, and you may find difficult to see what exactly is present there when you debug your application.

Although you can load a registry hive and see what is present inside it, with Advanced Installer’s Hover we made it much simpler for you.

Hover is a free tool developed by Advanced Installer’s team that allows you to run natively installed applications inside an MSIX/App-V container.

Advanced Installer’s Hover is free and available to download here.

Open Regedit in MSIX Container

We created a simple MSIX package that contains registry in two locations:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\TestComp\TestRedirectNew
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TestComp\TestRedirectNew

If we install the package and open up Regedit normally, we can see that these registry entries are not present.

To open up Regedit, right-click Hover and run as administrator. Regedit requires elevation in order to run.

Once Hover is opened, select the desired MSIX package and double-click Regedit from the right pane.

To launch executables inside an MSIX container, developer mode must be enabled. Hover automatically detects this and opens the Windows Settings page in case it's not enabled.

Now, if we navigate to the above registry keys, we notice that they are present in Regedit and any changes you perform here are saved.

As you can see, Hover is a time-saver with which you can easily solve the view-registry problem in MSIX container, by following simple steps.

Have you tried Hover by Advanced Installer yet?