I could use a little clarification. I have read Doug's Hennig article on this HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, and how Virtualization happens if an app attemps to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE on a Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8 computer. But I am a little confused.

I need the feature of a computer setting, and not just a particular user. This setting points to some specific path locations, and under XP HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE was the ideal solution.

In his article Doug said "You can't use HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE anymore:either use the virtualized HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VirtualsSore or store settings in a file in the common application data folder."

My question is this, is Doug saying we can write settings to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VirtualsSore to hold settings like we could in the past in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, or is he referring to what virtual settings that Vista/Win7/Win8 creates for legacy XP Apps?

I would prefer a quick location that I can write these settings to like I did in the past in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Any suggestions and help is greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance. I realize I could save these settings to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but then every user would have to select these paths which could cause some issues.