How do you change permissions on a registry key in Windows 7?

Question

My goal is to stop Windows from changing certain keys back to their default settings when the computer reboots. In answer to a previous question on Super User someone suggested setting a registry key to read-only. But when I look at the permissions there are four (I assume the one RESTRICTED is irrelevant so I'll ignore it):

• There's SYSTEM
• There's Me (I'm an admin)
• There's Administrators (which I assume is the 'default' administrator)

I don't know which one of these to change to make a key read only so that Windows itself can't alter it unless I change its permissions back. Further, I don't seem to be able to change the permissions on anything but the RESTRICTED user.

If it matters the specific keys I want to set to be unchangeable by Windows are:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseSensitivity
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\SwapMouseButtons

Answer 1

To make changes to permissions, you need to uncheck the Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent checkbox: