Not able to change value of a key under HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node in windows 7

Question

Can a standard user change/ delete the value of a key under HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node in windows 7? I am trying to do so from a code. But not able to change the value.

Answer 1

For the most part, no, code running with standard user privileges only has read-only access to HKLM.

You have to be running with admin privs to write to HKLM. Although on Windows XP and earlier, running as admin was the norm.

Try running your code from a cmd shell prompt launched with admin privileges. You should see a different result.

The facilitate backwards compat for older apps, there is registry virtualization. It's enabled in 32-bit code that doesn't have an embedded manifest. There's also the whole registry redirection thing for 32-bit code running on 64-bit OS.