VNC viewer and cd/thumb/flash/usb drive

[James Weatherall]

Mike,

HKEY_CURRENT_USER is writable by the current user, by definition - it's set
to refer to the user's registry hive when they log on.  In the case of the
Guest user, this is a temporary copy of the default user registry hive, and
so any data saved to it won't persist.  Installing applications requires
write access to parts of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, as well as to parts of the
filesystem, which is why non-Admins can't normally install apps to systems.

Cheers,

--
Wez @ RealVNC Ltd
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: vnc-list-admin "at" realvnc.com 
> [mailto:vnc-list-admin "at" realvnc.com] On Behalf Of Mike Miller
> Sent: 19 October 2007 15:04
> To: Seak, Teng-Fong
> Cc: VNC List
> Subject: Re: VNC viewer and cd/thumb/flash/usb drive
> 
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Seak, Teng-Fong wrote:
> 
> > Mike Miller wrote:
> >
> >> If the user of the Windows machine does not have administrator 
> >> permissions and is not allowed to install software, does this mean 
> >> that VNCviewer cannot run from the thumb drive?  I'm thinking that 
> >> the answer is yes because it won't be able to create the 
> registry entries.
> >
> >    It's written to this area:
> > HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RealVNC\VNCViewer4
> 
> 
> According to Microsoft...
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/r
> eskit/regentry/51211.mspx?mfr=true
> 
> "A new HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree is created each time a user logs on."
> 
> But the VNCviewer stores information more permanently.  For 
> example, it remembers where I have previously connected.  So 
> it must at least try to create other registry keys.
> 
> Also according to Microsoft:
> 
> "The HKEY_CURRENT_USER subtree does not contain any data. It 
> just stores a pointer to the content of..."
> 
> So if something is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER it is also 
> being written somewhere else.
> 
> The reason I am interested in this is that some friends in 
> another department have a very heavy-handed IT staff that 
> won't allow them to install any programs.  I'm wondering if 
> there is no way around this restriction.
> 
> Mike
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