I tested your code and made a few changes: import _winreg import sys
readfile = open("C:\scripts\ip.txt", 'r') IPList = readfile.readlines() for ClientIP in IPList: ClientIP = ClientIP.strip() ClientIP = r'\\' + ClientIP try: key = _winreg.ConnectRegistry(ClientIP, _winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) except EnvironmentError: sys.exit("EnvironmentError occured") hkey = _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion") OSver=_winreg.QueryValueEx( hkey, "ProductName") print OSver print "Exiting Script" sys.exit() It gives the following output on my XP box when running it against a ip.txt with two IP's, the firste being the box it self, the second a non-domain 2003-server in the network: (u'Microsoft Windows XP', 1) EnvironmentError occured -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list