Creating a registry key with path components via PowerShell

Question

For a legacy application, I need to create a registry key with a name in the format c:/foo/bar/baz. (Note: forward slashes, not backslashes.) To be clear: that is a single key's name, with forward slashes, that otherwise looks like a Windows path. Because I need to script this against lots of servers, PowerShell seems like a great option.

The problem is that I cannot figure out how to create a key in that format via PowerShell. New-Item -Path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Some\Key -Name 'c:/foo/bar/baz' errors out with PowerShell thinking I'm using / as a path separator and failing to find the path HKLM:\Software\Some\Key\c:\foo\bar, which does indeed not exist (and shouldn't). I can't find any other way to (ab)use New-Item to get what I want.

Is there something I'm missing, or should I give up and just generate and load a registry dump the old-fashioned way?

Answer 1

You need to do two things. First you need to get a writable RegistryKey object, otherwise you can't modify anything anyway. Second, use the CreateSubKey method on the RegistryKey object directly.

$writable = $true
$key = (get-item HKLM:\).OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE", $writable).CreateSubKey("C:/test")
$key.SetValue("Item 1", "Value 1")

After you create the key you use the resulting object to add values to it.