Reading registry values

I want to convert some ASP pages to PHP to go along with a transition from IIS to Apache. One of the ASP script functions involves reading data from the Windows registry. How does one read from the registry with PHP? Also, is it possible to use ActiveX objects with PHP? The above mentioned script uses a third party control to facilitate the registry operations. The VBScript code looks like this: Set objRegistry = CreateObject("RegObj.Registry") Is there a PHP equivalent? This newbie thanks you. -- Crash