Enigma Protector

I packed a 32 bit .NET 4.0 application with Enigma Virtual Box v5.3 Build 20120824. It also has a Win32 ActiveX control so I enabled the virtual registry function.

Everything seems to work very well until I tried to use any file open common dialog box in my .NET application. When any file open dialog box opens it take very long to open, up to 25 seconds, whereas when the application is not packed the file dialogs open instantly at the same path. When (and only when) the application is packed with enigma virtual box you can see an animation effect as the file dialog slowly navigates back to the last used path. I disabled the virtual registry and this fixed the problem, however I need the virtual registry in order to register my embedded ActiveX control on non admin accounts.

I found that if I make only HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT virtualised and not any of the others in the Registry tab then the common file open dialogs work a lot faster, although not as fast as when not packed. However, when I also add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE as virtualised it gets slower again to open a common file dialog and restore the last used path. I think I need HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE also to register an OCX activex control without admin privileges as my regedit shows references to the ocx there.

The problem occurs on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 64bit machines. I have not tried 32 bit Windows.

Hi SteveA,

Thanks you for the useful information.

In your case, probably, the delay is caused because there are a lot of registry read/write operations while open/save file dialog is showing. Usually, it does not use registry so much. You are the first who complains about such problem.
We will check it out. But if possible, can you please send us sample file (non packed) at vbox@enigmaprotector.com?

As regarding ActiveX, usually it requires only HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, so your idea to make only this registry key as virtual is correct. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE is not always used by ActiveX (even if there are reference in your registry), so in your case you should check if packed application works well without HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE virtualization in non admin account.

Also, if it possible, I would like to send you a debug version for tests, to see what exactly program does within this 25 seconds and what registry keys it processes there.

Just to let you know that this is no longer an issue. We made just HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT virtualised for our ActiveX and it is then fast enough with the latest versions of enigma virtual box.

In our software we restore the last used directory when we open the Windows common file open dialogs and it seems that Windows then restores all open paths in the directory tree to the expanded states that they were in before. So if you had many sub directories previously open, because the virtual registry was slower than the real registry it would take some time to read the values and restore all the expanded folders in the common file dialogs.

We tried another virtual packer software that had virtual registry features but found this one (enigma) was the fastest and most optimised in this respect.

Thanks you very much for your note!