java.util.Preferences and windows changes behaviour "silently"

[Eric Barboni]

Hi jdk7dev,

 I'm a Netbeans User and also member of Netcat. I'm not  fluent at all the
openjdk process. I would have preferably filed an issue but in the access is
restricted, that why I try to get informations that may help answering an
issue in Netbeans [1] by using the mailing list. I browse the < new > JIRA
based openjdk bug with no luck. 

At the time you develop Netbeans RCP application you can add qa-testing.
(Functionnal testing) that spy the logs. The default settings fail if a
warning is detected on the outpout. 
On a fresh windows installation + jdk 7u45 there is a warning that appears:
 [java.util.prefs] THREAD: main MSG: Could not open/create prefs root node
Software\JavaSoft\Prefs at root 0x80000002. Windows RegCreateKeyEx(...)
returned error code 5.
This output was never shown before.

Browsing web it seems that the windows hive
LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs is no longer created during install.
Using regedit and manually creating Prefs make the Warning deseapears.

I manually remove the key and try to uninstall / install the previous jdk
JDK u17 seems to be the last jdk to create this Prefs key during
installation phase.

Is it possible to have a rationale on this issue. If removal during install
is intended ? or why ?

Best Regards

Eric

[1]https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=234894