How to Retrieve the Registered User Under Windows

• Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Visual Basic for Windows, 16-bit only, version 4.0

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. This article provides a code sample showing how to extract this information.

MORE INFORMATION

Step-by-Step Example

1. Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.

2. Place a command button on the form.

3. 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
   
   

4. 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, as explained in article Q145679 by changing the RegisteredOrganization and RegisteredOwner values in:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion