Can I allow a write access to a particular registry key without elevation?

Question

I develop an extension for Visual Studio 2005, 2008, and 2010. The Visual Studio 2005 SDK requires write access to the following registry key during builds. The normal way to handle this run Visual Studio with elevated privileges. The entire issue can be avoided if there's some way I can set permissions to allow access to this particular registry key without elevation:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0Exp

Side note: This key is only used for testing Visual Studio 2005 extensions. The issue does not occur on client machines so this is just a workaround for my own development machine.

Answer 1

It should work to just add permissions to yourself on that registry key. UAC works by disabling the administrators group SID in your session token, so when running non-elevated you will get all permissions that you have - except those that are granted to you through your membership in the administrators group.