mercurial/scmwindows.py

--- a/mercurial/scmwindows.py	Tue Dec 03 17:17:57 2019 -0800
+++ b/mercurial/scmwindows.py	Thu Dec 05 11:15:19 2019 -0500
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
     value = util.lookupreg(
         b'SOFTWARE\\Mercurial', None, winreg.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
     )
-    if not isinstance(value, str) or not value:
+    if not isinstance(value, bytes) or not value:
         return rcpath
     value = util.localpath(value)
     for p in value.split(pycompat.ospathsep):