If you came across an “Error 10242″ while trying to patch Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor to a newer version, it’s because you’re missing required registry entries for the game. Fortunately, there’s a pretty simple solution to this.

Create a new empty .txt file on your desktop, and add the following in it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Company of Heroes]
“DisplayName”=”Company of Heroes”
“UninstallString”=”\”F:\\Games\\Company of Heroes\\Uninstall_English.exe\”"
“InstallLocation”=”F:\\Games\\Company of Heroes”
“Publisher”=”THQ Inc.”
“DisplayVersion”=”2.500.0″
“DisplayIcon”=”\”"F:\\Games\\Company of Heroes\\Uninstall_English.exe\”"

Be sure to change the path where the game is installed on all three locations above. Also make sure that the “Display Version” is the exact one you have: you can check that either in the game, or right click on the “RelicCOH.exe” file in the Company of Heroes folder and choosing “Properties” > “Details”: it’s displayed under “file version”.

Save the file with the required information above, change the file extension from .txt to .reg and run it. It’ll add the entries above to your PC registry and after that you should have no problems running the patches.