Is there a way to determine Internet Explorer Cookie Settings (that is, whether cookies are accepted or not) through the Windows Registry?
Here is a nice MS knowledge base article about how IE's security zones are managed in the registry.
It looks like this is the relevant part:
The following four registry entries take only effect if the following keys are present:
{AEBA21FA-782A-4A90-978D-B72164C80120} First Party Cookie
{A8A88C49-5EB2-4990-A1A2-0876022C854F} Third Party Cookie
Registry entries
1A02 Allow persistent cookies that are stored on your computer
1A03 Allow per-session cookies (not stored)
1A05 Allow 3rd party persistent cookies
1A06 Allow 3rd party session cookies
These registry entries are located in the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\<ZoneNumber>
and I'll add (from the same article) that these are the default zone numbers (although a user can customize these):
0 My Computer
1 Local Intranet Zone
2 Trusted sites Zone
3 Internet Zone
4 Restricted Sites Zone