Visual Basic has never seemed to implement the functionality of the registry into its standards until Visual Basic 4.0 was released. I myself was looking forward to seeing how the registry had been implemented into the new version of Visual Basic. Unfortunately, many other developers and I were shocked to see its lack of implementation of the Windows Registry. It did provide several functions:

SaveSetting – To store a value in the registry.

DeleteSetting – To delete a value from the registry.

GetSetting – Retrieve data from the registry.

GetAllSettings – Retrieve a collection of data from the registry.

All of these are perfectly documented in the Visual Basic help file, but has a limitation that many developers will need to overcome.

When you use any of the built in functions above, save SaveSetting, information is stored in the key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings

You cannot save, retrieve, modify or delete data from anywhere else in the registry, which proves the problem of the built in features.