>>George,
>>
>>While I agree for the most part, there are cases of errors in the SDK. See thread #542368 for one case. As I discovered, the relevant registry keys did not exist on any Win9X boxes that were available to me at the time.
>
>Jim,
>
>Not to necessarily take issue, but when dealing with the WinNT/2K versions of Windows and the registry, one should always be aware of security issues that may occur. While I admit that it would be nice to see some mention of it in the function description, the information is present in the Platform SDK under Windows System Information\Registry\Writing and Deleting Registry Data\Security.
>

Eeeek! George, my point was only that there were errors encountered in the docs. The stated functionality I required was said to be available under Win95 OSR2 and above. It was not. The security issue was another matter entirely, and I dealt with that individually on each laptop without resorting to any broad sweeping security changes, just the adjustment of ONE key.

>On Win2K at least, it is possible to whole restrict something like the installation of an application to the administrator level, for example. Since I'm relatively inexperienced with Win2K and its issues, this may simply be in the form of restricting access to the system folder, and possibly could be worked around by storing the necessary DLLs in the folder with the application. However, I do know from first hand experience that this sort of thing exists.
>

I will bow to your expertise here :>) I have just received my first copy of Win2K Pro and am just gathering the courage to "upgrade" my development machine. The mobiles MAY follow after a breakin period - meaning me.

>One should also realize that there is a fundamental difference between Win9x/Me and Win2K beyond network usage. The former platform being targeted more for the home, as opposed to business, user. The keys that you mention may indeed exist, but not necessarily. In this in case, it may depend on whether or not multiple users have been created for the Win9x/Me box.

I agree, yes indeed. I went so far as to set up both 95 and 98 (no ME here!) configurations with genuine different hardware configurations to test and neither would generate the required keys. NTWS did dandy. As that was my target, I left well enough alone and moved on.

As mentioned many times before in this and other forums, sometimes we must code to the least common denominator. Sadly, there are still a lot of Win9X machines out there. And I do not like to code to a specific OS.