diff --git a/lib/ohai/mixin/network_helper.rb b/lib/ohai/mixin/network_helper.rb
index c650674b4..67f2f1b3e 100644
--- a/lib/ohai/mixin/network_helper.rb
+++ b/lib/ohai/mixin/network_helper.rb
@@ -21,6 +21,12 @@
 require "socket" unless defined?(Socket)
 require "resolv" unless defined?(Resolv)
 
+if RUBY_PLATFORM.match?(/mswin|mingw32|windows/)
+  module Win32
+    autoload :Registry, File.expand_path("../monkey_patches/win32/registry", __dir__)
+  end
+end
+
 module Ohai
   module Mixin
     module NetworkHelper
diff --git a/lib/ohai/monkey_patches/win32/registry.rb b/lib/ohai/monkey_patches/win32/registry.rb
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..989f08d13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/ohai/monkey_patches/win32/registry.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+#
+# Copyright:: Copyright (c) Chef Software Inc.
+# License:: Apache License, Version 2.0
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+#
+
+# require_relative "../../win32/api/registry"
+# require_relative "../../win32/unicode"
+require "win32/registry" unless defined?(Win32::Registry)
+
+module Win32
+  class Registry
+
+    # ::Win32::Registry#export_string is used when enumerating child
+    # keys and values and re encodes a UTF-16LE to the local codepage.
+    # This can result in encoding incompatibilities if the native codepage
+    # does not support the characters in the registry. There is an open bug
+    # in ruby at https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/11410. Rather than converting
+    # the UTF-16LE originally returned by the win32 api, we encode to UTF-8
+    # which will likely not result in any conversion error.
+    def export_string(str, enc = Encoding.default_internal || "utf-8")
+      str.encode(enc)
+    end
+
+    # module API
+
+    #   extend Chef::ReservedNames::Win32::API::Registry
+
+    #   module_function
+
+    #   # ::Win32::Registry#delete_value uses RegDeleteValue which
+    #   # is not an imported function after bug 10820 was solved.  So
+    #   # we overwrite it to call the correct imported function.
+    #   # https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10820
+    #   # Still a bug in trunk as of March 21, 2016 (Ruby 2.3.0)
+    #   def DeleteValue(hkey, name)
+    #     check RegDeleteValueW(hkey, name.to_wstring)
+    #   end
+
+    #   # ::Win32::Registry#delete_key uses RegDeleteKeyW. We need to use
+    #   # RegDeleteKeyExW to properly support WOW64 systems.
+    #   # Still a bug in trunk as of March 21, 2016 (Ruby 2.3.0)
+    #   def DeleteKey(hkey, name)
+    #     check RegDeleteKeyExW(hkey, name.to_wstring, 0, 0)
+    #   end
+
+    end
+  end
+end