To audit activity on a registry key

Open Registry Editor

Click the key you want to audit.

On the Edit menu, click Permissions.

Click Advanced, and then click the Auditing tab.

Double-click the name of a group or user.

Under Access, select or clear the Successful and Failed check boxes for the activities that you want to audit or to stop auditing:

Select	To audit
Query Value	Any attempts to read a entry from a registry key
Set Value	Any attempts to set entries in a registry key
Create Subkey	Any attempts to create subkeys on a selected registry key
Enumerate Subkeys	Any attempts to identify the subkeys of a registry key
Notify	Any notification events from a key in the registry
Create Link	Any attempts to create a symbolic link in a particular key
Delete	Any attempts to delete a registry object
Write DAC	Any attempts to write a discretionary access control list on the key
Write Owner	Any attempts to change the owner of the selected key
Read Control	Any attempts to open the discretionary access control list on a key

Caution

•	Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on your computer.

Note

•	To open Registry Editor, click Start, click Run, type , and then click OK.
•	You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.
•	You must first add users and groups before specifying the events to audit.
•	Auditing activity can slow the computer down significantly. Consider auditing only failures, and not successes.

•	Remove a user or group from the Audit list
•	Add users or groups to the Audit list