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"D Ray" <david@timecalc.com> wrote in message 
news:474a4ca5$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> I need a place in the registry to create a value that is read/writeable by 
> all users (whether admin or ordinary and regardless of which user created 
> it) on a system and will work with any version of Windows from Windows2000 
> forward.
> Does such a location exist?

The usual place is hkey_local_machine\software\Your Company\Your Software 
Title

Whatever the case, you will always need Registry write access if you want to 
store data there. Under Vista, this usually needs the manual dismissal of at 
least one UAC prompt.
-- 
Mark Jacobs
DK Computing
http://www.dkcomputing.co.uk

Nope nope nope nope, HKLM is for Administrator users only.
Sorry for sounding a little harsh Mark, but I am right
on this.

I think I will have to write an article on this or something.

For all user settings, use HKEY_USERS (your hKey)
then.....
".DEFAULT\\Software\\Your Company\\Your Software Title\\" (your SubKey)
as the starting point for your settings.....

It will work in Win2k (all), WinXp Pro, Win2003 Server(s), Win Vista (all).

I have software that works on all these platforms without any
tricky coding and all work perfectly - same code base same EXE.



Mark Jacobs wrote:
> "D Ray" <david@timecalc.com> wrote in message 
> news:474a4ca5$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
>> I need a place in the registry to create a value that is 
>> read/writeable by all users (whether admin or ordinary and regardless 
>> of which user created it) on a system and will work with any version 
>> of Windows from Windows2000 forward.
>> Does such a location exist?
> 
> The usual place is hkey_local_machine\software\Your Company\Your 
> Software Title
> 
> Whatever the case, you will always need Registry write access if you 
> want to store data there. Under Vista, this usually needs the manual 
> dismissal of at least one UAC prompt.

Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:

>Nope nope nope nope, HKLM is for Administrator users only.
>Sorry for sounding a little harsh Mark, but I am right
>on this.

Unfortunately, your idea of using the per-user setting will provide a
different place for each user. I suspect that that is not exactly what
the OP wanted.

Alan Bellingham
-- 
Team Browns
<url:http://www.borland.com/newsgroups/> Borland newsgroup descriptions
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Alan Bellingham wrote:
> Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:
> 
>> Nope nope nope nope, HKLM is for Administrator users only.
>> Sorry for sounding a little harsh Mark, but I am right
>> on this.
> 
> Unfortunately, your idea of using the per-user setting will provide a
> different place for each user. I suspect that that is not exactly what
> the OP wanted.
> 
> Alan Bellingham

And this is why you use [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT] and not HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

HKLM is for special information like installation logs, hardware
auto run on login.. etc....Not for all user settings, that needs
to be available to all users.

Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:

>And this is why you use [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT] and not HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
>
>HKLM is for special information like installation logs, hardware
>auto run on login.. etc....Not for all user settings, that needs
>to be available to all users.

Ah, sorry.

I misread your response - the moment the HKEY...USER turned up, I read
it as HKCU. Blame the autopilot.

Alan Bellingham
-- 
Team Browns
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Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:

>For all user settings, use HKEY_USERS (your hKey)
>then.....
>".DEFAULT\\Software\\Your Company\\Your Software Title\\" (your SubKey)
>as the starting point for your settings.....
>
>It will work in Win2k (all), WinXp Pro, Win2003 Server(s), Win Vista (all).
>
>I have software that works on all these platforms without any
>tricky coding and all work perfectly - same code base same EXE.

Unfortunately, attempting to create a new key under
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software just fails with an error for me.

(That the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT appears to be the place where the Local
System account stores stuff (and nothing to do with default users at
all) probably doesn't help.)

The *only* keys on this machine that I have write access to are
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-796845957-117609710-839522115-1003 and
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-796845957-117609710-839522115-1003_Classes, which I
am under the impression is specific to this user SID.

So I think I don't understand your solution. Remember, the objective is
to provide a place where all users can both read and write values.

My personal inclination would be to create a key during installation as
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MyCompany\MySoftware\SharedSettings, and set
that key to be accessible to all. That'd require elevated permissions
during install, but I need that anyway.

Alan Bellingham
-- 
Team Browns
<url:http://www.borland.com/newsgroups/> Borland newsgroup descriptions
<url:http://www.borland.com/newsgroups/netiquette.html>      netiquette

Alan Bellingham wrote:
> Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately, attempting to create a new key under
> HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software just fails with an error for me.
> 
> (That the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT appears to be the place where the Local
> System account stores stuff (and nothing to do with default users at
> all) probably doesn't help.)

Alan I am embarrassed, you are right.....(after swearing by my methods).

This means most of my customers are running as Admin accounts...
(bummer)... I will keep looking for a solution.....

:(

On another note Alan, I remember that what I do is not store
centralized setting in the registry, but in a common location
in the hard disk.

First I call SHGetSpecialFolderLocation with
nFolder = CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA;

This gives the Documents and Settings folder then I go
[docs and settings]\\company\\product\\product.ini
and write to this ini file.

This is how I centralize my settings....and it works with
non-admin accounts.

 >>
 >> It will work in Win2k (all), WinXp Pro, Win2003 Server(s), Win Vista 
(all).
 >>

Sorry about the mis-information.....


Alan Bellingham wrote:
> Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:
> 
>> For all user settings, use HKEY_USERS (your hKey)
>> then.....
>> ".DEFAULT\\Software\\Your Company\\Your Software Title\\" (your SubKey)
>> as the starting point for your settings.....
>>
>> It will work in Win2k (all), WinXp Pro, Win2003 Server(s), Win Vista (all).
>>
>> I have software that works on all these platforms without any
>> tricky coding and all work perfectly - same code base same EXE.
> 
> Unfortunately, attempting to create a new key under
> HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software just fails with an error for me.
> 
> (That the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT appears to be the place where the Local
> System account stores stuff (and nothing to do with default users at
> all) probably doesn't help.)
> 
> The *only* keys on this machine that I have write access to are
> HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-796845957-117609710-839522115-1003 and
> HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-796845957-117609710-839522115-1003_Classes, which I
> am under the impression is specific to this user SID.
> 
> So I think I don't understand your solution. Remember, the objective is
> to provide a place where all users can both read and write values.
> 
> My personal inclination would be to create a key during installation as
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\MyCompany\MySoftware\SharedSettings, and set
> that key to be accessible to all. That'd require elevated permissions
> during install, but I need that anyway.
> 
> Alan Bellingham

Colin B Maharaj <noreply@myhost.com> wrote:

>Alan I am embarrassed, you are right.....(after swearing by my methods).
>
>This means most of my customers are running as Admin accounts...
>(bummer)... I will keep looking for a solution.....
>
>:(

Damn. I was really hoping you did have a solution. (It does seem an
interesting shortcoming in the registry that there doesn't seem to be a
central place as asked for by the OP.)

Alan Bellingham
-- 
Team Browns
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