System Registry Question

I am writing a security program, that needs to use the system registry. (I know what I m doing). My program writes to the system registry...at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/.../Run It puts it's path into the registry so the program will run each time windows boots. MY QUESTION: ============ What if I put a program's path into the... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/.../RunService I have an idea what this is, but I just want to make sure. Is a service a program that runs BEFORE explorer loads? Like when you first install windows, the clock comes up (clock.exe). I am assuming the clock.exe is put into: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/.../RunServiceOnce I assume that I know what the services are, program that boot before ANYTHING is booted. MY QUESTION PART 2 ================== If I load a service, if it is what I think it is, will I be able to access things saved in files without explorer? Once I removed the "shell=Explorer.exe" from the system.ini file, and my program worked fine - but windows did not really like it. But, when I took out "shell=Explorer.exe" explorer did not load (and some errors came up), but all of the disk operations worked fine. ...advice from the insane E-Mail Website Edited by - Programmer One on December 21, 2001 8:47:29 PM