Win32 installers: is there a way to write to HKU startup for each user?

Question

Is there a Windows installer that will add to startup for each user like
<user>\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
for each user on the system? I can't write to HKLM because the program being installed is hardcoded to work with HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run when toggling the start-on-login preference.

I'm also wondering how to deal with the situation where a user is created after the application is installed. Is there a place where I can put a key in a default registry profile?

Also what installer do you guys use? NSIS? Inno Setup? Advanced Installer?

Thanks

Anders · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-04T03:48:24.757

5

Windows has a thing called Active Setup, it allows you to "runonce" something for each user on the machine.

NSIS has a helper script called EnumUsersReg, it does its best to give you access to all HKCUs on the local machine as long as you have administrator rights.

To set defaults for a new user, load and edit the correct ntuser.dat.

edited Dec 04 '16 at 03:48

answered Apr 23 '12 at 20:49

Anders

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This appears to be the best answer. I'm going with Active Setup. – loop Apr 24 '12 at 22:46

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 11:23

A setup can not reliably write to any other users profile.

Having said that, I beleive Windows installer and Windows 7 introduced a way to specify settings that are to be applied to all subsequant users.

This will NOT work in a non MSI based installer without something running for every user login from here to eternity.

Win32 installers: is there a way to write to HKU startup for each user?

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