New workaround for MEPCE Sync Tool in environments where registry editing is disabled by administrator

[jmmcneil]

Howdy everyone. I found and fixed a bug in MEP Content Editor Sync that required I run the tool as administrator in order to view available configurations. This isn't much of a problem for me as I have an admin account, but no one else on my team does.

After a little snooping in the logs I discovered that the problem is an effect of the following:

1. %ProgramFiles%\Autodesk\MEP Content Editor Sync\resources\app\main.js calls reg.exe to get MachineGuid from HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography
2. The IT Security team at my org has disabled registry editing by non-admin users; Any calls to reg.exe are guaranteed to fail

As a fan of PowerShell I know that I'm able to read reg keys and values from a standard account using the command Get-ItemProperty. I made a few changes to main.js and now MEPCE Sync is working as expected from a standard user account (no admin privileges required).

Note: main.js is minified out of the box - I formatted the document with Prettier in order to debug. I've included line numbers as comments after formatting, but your mileage may vary. A quick search for reg.exe should help you locate the relevant code in your files.

main.js (Before)

case "win32": // ln: 17533
  return e
    .toString()
    .split("REG_SZ")[1]
    .replace(/\r+|\n+|\s+/gi, "")
    .toLowerCase();
// ...
win32: { // ln: 17577
  native: "%windir%\\System32",
  mixed: "%windir%\\sysnative\\cmd.exe /c %windir%\\System32",
}[i()] + "\\REG.exe QUERY HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Cryptography /v MachineGuid",

main.js (After)

// The case statement in this section is expecting 'REG_SZ' to be present
// in the value returned in the later section. My patch doesn't include
// that text in its return value, so we have to account for that here.
case "win32": { // ln: 17533
  var p = e.toString().split("REG_SZ");
  return (p.length > 1 ? p[1] : p[0])
    .replace(/\r+|\n+|\s+/gi, "")
    .toLowerCase();
}
// ...
win32: { // ln: 17577
  native: "powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command",
  mixed: "%windir%\\sysnative\\cmd.exe /c powershell.exe -NoProfile -Command",
}[i()] + " \"(Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Cryptography' -Name MachineGuid).MachineGuid\"",

I hope this helps someone else as much as it has helped me! Maybe someone from Autodesk can take a look at integrating this as a fallback in the next version of MEP Content Editor Sync.

My apologies if this is not the correct board for this sort of topic.