Ansible win_regedit — Remove Registry

How to Remove Windows Registry key on Windows-like systems with Ansible?

Changing registry values manually can be time-consuming and error-prone. Ansible includes built-in capabilities for managing individual key-value pairs in an idempotent way.

Ansible remove Windows Registry on Windows-like systems

• ansible.windows.win_regedit
• Get information about Windows registry keys

Let's talk about the Ansible module win_regedit. The full name is ansible.windows.win_regedit , which means that is part of the collection of modules specialized to interact with Windows target host. It's a module pretty stable and out for years and it works in Windows and Windows Server operating systems. It adds, changes, or removes registry keys and values.

Parameters

• path string - The full registry key path including the hive to search for
• name string - Name of the registry entry in the path parameters.
• state string - present/absent

The only mandatory parameter is "path" which is the full registry key path including the hive to search for. You might like to specify a single "name" of the name of the registry entry. If you want to delete all the paths, basically all the Windows Registry tree but if you want only the single entry you need also to specify the "name" of it. Please be careful! The essential parameter for our use-case is "state" to specify if we would like to add or modify ("present" option) or remove ("absent" option).

Playbook

How to Remove Windows Registry key on Windows-like systems accessing the Windows Registry with Ansible Playbook. Specifically, I'm going to delete a Windows Registry key located in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Test".

code

---
- name: windows registry remove
  hosts: all
  vars:
    mypath: 'HKLM:\Software\Test'
  tasks:
    - name: registry remove path
      ansible.windows.win_regedit:
        path: "{{ mypath }}"
        state: absent

execution

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory windows/registry_remove.yml
PLAY [windows registry remove] ********************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
TASK [registry remove path] ***********************************************************************
changed: [WindowsServer]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
WindowsServer              : ok=2    changed=1    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

idempotency

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachines/win/inventory windows/registry_remove.yml
PLAY [windows registry remove] ********************************************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] ****************************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
TASK [registry remove path] ***********************************************************************
ok: [WindowsServer]
PLAY RECAP ****************************************************************************************
WindowsServer              : ok=2    changed=0    unreachable=0    failed=0    skipped=0    rescued=0    ignored=0
ansible-pilot $

before execution

after execution

code with ❤️ in GitHub

Conclusion

Now you know how to remove the Windows Registry key on Windows-like systems with Ansible.