In an attempt to write a custom MSI installer for GS 8.63 I've just run a tracelog of the registry actions performed by the default GS installer. To my surprise the tracelog (from sysinternals Process Monitor) indicates that the Operation RegSetValue is triggered 8 times on the following item: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\RNG\Seed Why does that happen? Best regards / Med venlig hilsen Jacob Schäffer | Chief Developer Paradis Allé 22, Ramløse DK-3200 Helsinge, Denmark Phone: +45 4439 4400 Email: js@grafikhuset.dk Web: www.grafikhuset.net
Created attachment 4556 [details] CSV formatted tracelog
The new NSIS-based installer (bug 691363) does remove registry entries it adds, AFAIK. It is true that the current winzipse-based installer does not remove registry entries on uninstall, I believe.
setupgs.exe requires privilege escalation to gain admin privilege to write to "C:\Program Files\gs", at least under Vista and win 7 (See also Bug 691302 and http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691363#c4). That likely involves invoking windows's crypto API, and therefore need to manipulate Crypto RNG Seed. Two things you can try is (1) see if the NSIS-installer (which also tries to gain admin privilege to write to %PROGRAMFILES%) behaves the same way, (2) comment out the two "mt.exe" commands in psi/*.mak while building setupgs.exe, uninstallgs.exe to strip the privilege escalation, to see if the result still access those keys.
Windows 7 and 10 no longer have this key, but Ghostscript installs just fine. According to the net, this key was used to collect entropy. It was updated by most ordinary applications, such as notepad.exe .