Easy fix Error Connecting Network Registry on Windows 10

You may get the Error Connecting Network Registry dialog. This is because the Remote Registry service is stopped by default. The startup type is Manual. This setting leads to the following error when you try to connect to the registry from another computer on the network:

Error Connecting Network Registry
Unable to connect to computerX Make sure that this computer is on the network, has remote administration enabled, and that both computers are running the remote registry service.

How to fix Error Connecting Network Registry temporarily

To connect to the remote registry, do the following on the destination computer:

1. Click Start, type services.msc in the Search bar and press Enter. You may need to run services.msc as administrator
2. In the Services window, scroll down to Remote Registry. Right-click Remote Registry and click Start
3. Open the Registry Editor and try to connect to the remote computer

How to start Remote Registry service with services.msc

To connect to the registry of a remote computer, you need to have the RemoteRegistry service started on the destination computer. To start the Remote Registry Service, do the following:

1. Click Start, type services.msc in the Search bar and press Enter. You may need to run services.msc as administrator
2. In the Services window, scroll down to Remote Registry. Right-click Remote Registry and click Properties
3. In the Startup type drop-down list box, choose Automatic, as shown in the figure below.
   
4. Click Start if the service is not started yet.
5. Click OK to apply and close.

How to Fix Error Connecting Network Registry with sc config

It’s also possible to do these settings with a command line. Follow these steps to start the Remote Registry service:

1. On the destination computer, open a command prompt as administrator
2. Type net start RemoteRegistry
3. Press Enter

The Remote Registry service is now started. But once you restart the computer, the service will be stopped again.
If you want the service to start when Windows start, you need to configure the Remote Registry service with sc config. Follow these steps:

1. On the destination computer, open a command prompt as administrator
2. Type sc config RemoteRegistry start= auto
   (Note the whitespace between “start=” and “auto”)
3. Press Enter
   

The Remote Registry service is now configured to start at the startup of Windows. Note: it is not started instantly with this command! To start it now, type net start RemoteRegistry and press Enter

Final note

All solutions provided are valid for Windows 7 and Windows 10. However, you may still experience the issue. If that’s the case, verify that:

• your firewall rules are set up correctly. The easiest way to test, is to disable the firewall on the remote computer (the ‘destination’)
• you can ping the computer. In a command prompt, type ping ‘computername’. If it returns an IP-address, it’s set up correctly. If it returns Ping request could not find host, the IP-address of the computer is unknown. You then need to fix this DNS issue first 🙂