Quote Originally Posted by guayo
I want to login as an administrator, select a local user from a list, and make a change on the selected User's registry Key.
I was reading someplace that to do this I have to load the profile first to make it visible under HKEY_USERS. Is that what I need to do?
Are you tryin to do it programmatically?? Well I know how to run a process / application as another user, but I doubt if you can do so much of work through it.

To run a process as another user, look for LogonUser, CreateProcessAsUser, and CreateProcessWithLogonW ( this is not available for 9x, and Me, AFAIK) APIs.

If you are just doing it manually, and at the same time, you are not logged in as an Administrator,
  • Goto %SYSTEMROOT% (C:\Windows in XP), right-click "Regedit.exe", and click "Run As..." in the context menu.
  • Select "Run as Another user", enter the username as Administrator and its password, click OK.
  • Make sure that you have "Show Hidden Files and Folders" chekced in Folder options.
  • Check the HK_Users Hive, you will have the 3 LocalSystem accounts, hive of current logged in account, and hive of administrator.
  • Highlight Hkey_Users, and in the File menu, click "Load Hive".
  • Goto "C:\Documents and Settings\Desired Account name\" and look for "NTUSER.DAT" file.
  • Click on this file, click OK, then enter the Alias name for the loading hive.
  • You are ready to set/unset the registry properties of another user.


Disclaimer: The original poster, guayo, hereby agree that he/she takes entire responsibilty for any damage or error that occurs due to the above procedure to change registry settings. I, Harsh Gupta, am not responsible for any negative effect.

Warning: If you have no experience with Registry, don't play with it. It could result in crashing of your entire system.