(y/N)
Edit: Read-only access is fine.
I haven't tried this yet, but I think I've found a workaround.
Adobe AIR cannot write to Windows Registry, but you can, however, launch a native process in AIR 2. Here's a blog post that shows how to do that: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/quickstart/articles/interacting_with_native_process.html
Now, on Windows, you are able to modify the Windows registry with .reg files. .reg files are just plain text files that's read by regedit.exe. So in theory, you can write a .reg file to the file system, then launch regedit.exe with the .reg file passed in and...TADA! You just modified Windows registry from your AIR app!
To read value, you can use regedit's export function to write to a reg file and read from the reg file. Details to regedit's options: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/regedit.php
Here are some additional resources:
.reg file syntax: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310516
write to file with AIR: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/flex/articles/exploring_file_capabilities.html