Managing System Environment Variable

OS: Windows 2000 or higher

System Environment Variables can be managed using one of the ways below

1. Start->Control Panel-> System->Under Advanced tab->Click Environment Variables button->Add, modify, delete system or user variables by clicking New, Edit or Delete buttons respectively . Reboot the system for changes to take an Effect.

2. System Environment Variables can be managed by making changes to the registry key Below

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

• Run command->regedit
• Browse to the above registry key
  
• Add Variable -> Create a New Value under this Key
• Modify Variable-> Modify Value if it already exists under this key
• Delete Variable -> Delete a registry value for the variable
  
  Modifying registry requires a reboot for changes to take an effect

3. SetEnv command can be used to manage system environment variables and avoid reboot

Download a free tool at link below

http://www.codeproject.com/tools/SetEnv.asp

• Add or modify a system variable
  SetEnv –a [VARIABLENAME ] [VARIABLEVALUE]
  
  
• Add to a variable with multiple values, prefix value with % character
  SetEnv –a [VARIABLENAME ] %[VARIABLEVALUE]
  
  
• Add User Variable
  SetEnv –ua [VARIABLENAME ] [VARIABLEVALUE]
  
  
• Deleting a variable
  SetEnv –d [VARIABLENAME ] [VARIABLEVALUE]
  
  
• Deleting a value from multiple value variable
  SetEnv –d [VARIABLENAME ] %[VARIABLEVALUE]
  
  
• Deleting a user variable
  SetEnv –ud [VARIABLENAME ] [VARIABLEVALUE]

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