How to edit the registry keys of a specific user programatically?

Question

I want to change a few settings of a Windows user that I created in my application. If I understand correctly, his "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" values will be under HKEY_USERS/<sid>/.... Is this correct? How can I get the sid of the user, if I know the user name and the domain?

Edit: How can I correctly edit the HKCU keys of that user, if I have the sid already?

Answer 1

I have a program that does exactly that. Here is the relevant part of the code:

NTAccount ntuser = new NTAccount(strUser);
SecurityIdentifier sID = (SecurityIdentifier) ntuser.Translate(typeof(SecurityIdentifier));
strSID = sID.ToString();

You will need to import two namespaces:

using System.DirectoryServices;
using System.Security.Principal;

Hope this helps.

Then use Registry.Users.SetValue with SID string\path to set the registry value.

This might not work as intended if you are editing a logged-off profile, especially a roaming profile.