Quote Originally Posted by zspirit View Post
By default CWinApp::SetRegistryKey() set the application registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER so each user (windows login account) has their private settings stored for them. However I would like my applications settings to be common for all windows users so I want to store them under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE was designed to be used as read-only for normal users. So you could write some initial data to it while installing your application; then all users would be able to read those data.
To write to HKLM as Arjay pointed out the users have to run under higher access privileges, which nowaday almost impossible (except some cases like software installing.)

So I'd recommend you to change your design.